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EPOCHS IN CHURCH HISTORY 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 



j/ BY THE LATE 

E. A. WASHBURN, D.D, 

RECTOR OF CALVARY CHURCH, NEW YORK 



EDITED BY THE 

REV. C. C. TIFFANY 

RECTOR OF ZION CHURCH, NEW YORK 




NEW YORK 
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 

39 West Twenty-third St. 
1883 



Copyright, 1883, 
By E. P. DUTTON & CO. 



PRES9 OF J. J. LITTLE 4 CO., 
NOS. 10 TO 20 ASTOR PLACE, NEW YORK 






PREFACE. 



The discourses of the late Edward A. Washburn, 
D.D., which form the contents of the present volume, 
were not all prepared by him for publication. The 
three essays on topics relating to Biblical interpreta- 
tion were printed during his life, and the article on a 
Personal Resurrection was published in the Princeton 
Review, in the May number of 1878. These seemed 
to the Editor so valuable and of such interest at 
the present time, that their preservation in the vol- 
ume now issued appeared to be a duty, especially as 
so few of the manuscripts left by Dr. Washburn were 
in a condition in which he would have consented to 
have them published. The discourses on Epochs of 
Church History, which form the bulk of this book, 
were originally delivered to the Students of the Ber- 
keley Divinity School, where Dr. Washburn was Pro- 
fessor of Church Polity, while holding the Rectorship 
of St. John's Church, Hartford, Ct., from 1854 to 
1863. They were afterwards changed in form, and 



iv Preface. 

preached to his congregation in Calvary Church, New- 
York, and were also, at least in part, delivered in 
Philadelphia, before the Faculty and Students of 
the Divinity School, about the year 1878. Dr. 
Washburn had intended to revise them for publi- 
cation, but before he could accomplish the task, his 
hand was stilled from earthly labor. They were left 
incomplete in treatment, and lacking in that finished 
style which his artistic nature demanded as the fit 
vehicle for the expression of his thought. But the 
fact that Dr. Washburn meant to publish these dis- 
courses in a more finished form, determined the Editor 
to print them, though incomplete. They contain the 
substance of his thought, by which he wished to in- 
form and influence others; and though doubtless he 
might have made them more full and elaborate, more 
artistically worthy of himself, he would not have 
changed in an iota his principles of historical criticism, 
nor have altered the course of his argument. The 
papers in the volume have been printed just as he left 
them. Whatever they may be, they are Dr. Wash- 
burn's thoughts in Dr. Washburn's words. No one 
who knew him as well as the Editor could hesitate a 
moment to print whatever was printed exactly as it 
was left. No one true to him would venture to make 
changes for the mere sake of improving the elegance 
of the expression. He would be himself, even if in 
undress. Doubtless had he been able to prepare 



Preface. v 

these papers for the press, he would have changed the 
form of some statements, and have avoided some rep- 
etitions, now obvious enough. But the Editor has 
felt that the reader would wish the Author's own ex- 
pression, though it might perhaps be better suited to 
a spoken lecture than to a printed discourse. 

In selecting the contents of the present volume from 
the large mass of manuscript placed in his hands, the 
Editor had to take that which was in itself most com- 
plete, and that which treated of subjects which Dr. 
Washburn especially valued, History and Biblical 
criticism were, above all others, the chosen themes on 
which he loved to dwell. He believed they were the 
most fruitful and most healthful of all topics in their in- 
fluence on the problems of our own time, and he be- 
lieved equally that they were in great danger of being 
treated on false principles and by wrong methods. He 
had no sympathy with that view of Church history 
which kept it apart from the history of the civilization in 
which the Church lived and acted, which it influenced, 
and by which it was influenced in turn. It was as a 
vital factor in the life of men and of nations, that he 
found its value, not as a storehouse of ecclesiastical 
traditions or the manufactory of theological proposi- 
tions. It was the growth of a kingdom which he saw in 
the rising walls of the city of God ; a kingdom destined 
to elevate and purify the whole life of mankind, in- 
dividual, social and political. In his view the king- 



vi Preface. 

doms of this world were to become the kingdoms of our 
God and of his Christ, not by the consolidation of an 
ecclesiastical hierarchy, or the elaboration of theolog- 
ical subtleties, but by the purification of all life through 
the application of the righteousness and truth of the 
Gospel to every department of living. The Church 
in its truth and fellowship was the leaven, but the whole 
mass of human society, permeated and restored, was 
the completed kingdom. Hence came his apprecia- 
tion of forms of Church life and action in other days, 
which he nevertheless believed had passed, and ought 
to have passed, forever. Hence his interest in all the 
practical social problems of his own time, which he 
felt could only be solved by the application to them 
of the eternal principles of God's revelation in his Son. 
His belief in Christ, as the Revealer of God's life to 
human life, was so reverent and so intense, that he was, 
above all, earnest to study the record of that life and 
word by all the light which Christian history and 
Christian scholarship could bring to bear upon it. That 
word and life were to him so truly Divine that he 
believed they must find fuller vindication and ampler 
application as the mind of the Church was ripened in 
wisdom by the discipline of its history. Hence, he 
held to the modern Church as the truly ancient 
Church; and hence true criticism, both of the Bible 
and of history, was, in his view, no resting in the dicta 
of the early Fathers, nor acceptance of the disci- 



Preface. vii 

pline of earlier ages differently circumstanced from 
ours, but a reverent study in the light of all modern 
discoveries in every branch of literature or science 
which could elucidate the truth and bring it to bear 
on the life of the present day. 

Dr. Washburn thus, in all his studies and writings, 
was both conservative and progressive. He held to the 
present both as the fruit of the past and as the seed of 
the future. To him " every scribe instructed unto the 
kingdom of heaven must be like an householder 
which bringeth forth out of his treasury things new 
and old;" things old, eternal in their principle ; new in 
their application. Therefore search diligently for the 
old, the veritable, untarnished truth, he would say, 
by the most thorough criticism of the Gospel, and 
learn how to make it new in its force by the en- 
lightened study of the victories and the failures, the 
achievements and the errors of the long-developing life 
of the Church. 

The following discourses illustrate, though in brief, 
his thought upon the true method of Biblical and Ec- 
clesiastical study. Brief as they are, they are full of 
his keenness of conception and vigor of treatment. 
Whether one agrees with the opinions expressed in 
them or not, the Editor has felt that they must prove 
a healthful stimulus to a living study of the two most 
vital problems of our time, Biblical criticism and his- 
torical investigation. They are therefore given to 



viii Preface. 

the public as sketches rather than finished pictures ; 
but sketches in which we detect the movement of a 
master hand and the conception of a master mind. 

C. C. TIFFANY. 

Easter-Tide, 1883. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

The Apostolic Age i 

The Nicene Age 25 

The Latin Age 49 

The Reformation 77 

The English Church 105 

The Church of America 138 

The Church of the Future 168 

Richard Hooker 199 

The Aim and Influence of Biblical Criticism 239 

The Christian Conscience and the Study of the 

Scriptures 274 

Christian Faith and Theology 303 

Judaism and Christianity 328 

A Personal Resurrection and Modern Physical Science . 349 

ix 



EPOCHS IN CHURCH HISTORY. 



THE APOSTOLIC AGE. 

APOSTOLIC Christianity is the divine, unfading child- 
hood of our religion. The old Church, gray with the 
centuries of battle, weary with hopes long deferred, 
looks back as the old man looks at the past, and 
wishes that it might return to that one sinless Par- 
adise of faith and unity. 

Yet it has had too often not a sober view of that 
period ; but as our old age sees the past idealized in 
the far perspective, and forgets the true law of growth, 
so that Apostolic period has been made a dreamland. 
Here all our theorists, unchristian as well as Christian, 
our restorers of a primitive faith, the Lollard, or a Fox, 
or a Zinzendorf; our champions of a democratic or an 
Episcopal polity ; our socialists from the earlier Coen- 
obite to the later St. Simon, have sought the exact 
pattern of their systems. It has been mapped out, as 
in an old Bible in my library the Eden is drawn in 
picture, each of its four rivers traced in its windings, 
i i 



2 Epochs in Church History. 

and the whole landscape as defined as if a state sur- 
veyor had triangulated it. 

And thus in our own time there has arisen a keen 
and unsparing criticism as to this period of history. 
The battle of our modern Christianity is to be fought 
on this field. There are two positions which divide 
army against army. The one is still the traditional 
view, which regards it as the perfect age, where are all 
complete forms of church life. The other is the de- 
structive school, which rejects the authenticity of its 
Scriptures, and considers its whole system as the 
fabric of that sub-Apostolic time between the Apostles 
and the second century. 

I wish to read that history as the champion of nei- 
ther school. I regard the guesses of the unbelieving 
critics as far wilder than any dreams of churchmen ; 
and believe that we have the surest proof of the essen- 
tial truth of the record, and the unity of the faith. Yet 
I hold it one of the noblest results of our historic criti- 
cism, that it has, by its thorough study of the New Tes- 
tament in its sources, gained a far truer conception of 
the living growth of that time. If I can give you a true 
outline, it will open to you the whole of the after history. 
We shall indeed correct some of the dreams of an Apos- 
tolic past. We shall learn that the golden age does not 
lie in the past, but in the future. Yet we shall rise 
from the study to a nobler knowledge of the purpose of 
God in a revelation which is to the " end of the days." 



The Apostolic Age. 3 

We turn, then, at once to the immortal picture as it 
stands on the first page of the book of the Acts, the 
record of this wonderful body, which sprung at once 
into life after our Lord's departure. It is not chiefly 
the miracle of the Pentecost, it is the real character of 
that community, which commands our attention. The 
supernatural gifts of the Pentecost are only tempo- 
rary signs of the organization of the Church itself. It is 
a spiritual movement, in which is the creation of a struct- 
ure that lasts through the history of mankind. Here 
we recognize its proof of divinity. And here we meet at 
the outset the ground error of our modern destructive 
criticism. It is the claim of the school of Baur, that 
this Church of the Pentecost was, in his own words, 
built on the enthusiastic fancy of Christ's resurrection. 
I know in no vagaries of Christian scholars one that 
compares with this of men who pretend to historic 
science. There is nothing which more clearly reveals 
at the outset its preconceived error. It cannot reject 
the facts of such an early Church, the authenticity of 
its birth and marvellous growth out of a broken band 
of disciples, unlettered, obscure, seemingly dead after 
their Master's death ; yet it is compelled to claim that 
all of this came out of the fable of a resurrection. But 
I turn now to the features of that body. We see the 
Apostles, the leaders of the community. We see the 
sole outpouring of the gifts of the Spirit. All the be- 
lievers act from one social law. Their unity is in the 



4 Epochs in Church History. 

common acceptance of a faith in the risen Lord, the 
present, abiding Head. The earliest worship is a daily 
assemblage for prayers, and "breaking of bread," the 
Communion of the Supper. And this leads us to the 
kindred conception. It was a social as well as a re- 
ligious body. There is no likeness to any of the Com- 
munist systems, of earlier or later type ; a brotherhood, 
which abolished the right of property. This has been 
unreasonably granted by some expositors. But we 
have the clearest warrant from the case of Ananias, 
for affirming that the " one mind and one heart," the 
voluntary principle, was its basis. Yet in the highest 
sense that social law, which the Church of Christ, as 
a merely ecclesiastical body, has so often forgotten, 
lay in its original design. It was the type of a 
regenerate society, a family of Christ. 

This was the original Church of Christ ; I ask you to 
study it well. Here, at the start, we realize the idea 
of the Church which St. Paul gives in his Epistle to 
the Ephesians ; a Body, but one Life ; the idea which 
marks the dividing line between the New Testament 
and the notion of an ecclesiastical structure. It is a 
community having in itself the inherent, constructive 
growth of a social state. It is a living germ, not yet 
ripened, but to ripen by the process of the years. We 
are now to study it down to the close of the Apostolic 
age in its doctrine and polity ; I cannot give you more 
than the outline, but this I would give clearly. As 



The Apostolic Age. 5 

we look, then, first, at the belief of this community, 
we find them almost entirely Jews. They had only 
the Old Testament, and their views of divine revela- 
tion, of the history of man, of salvation, of the end of 
the world, of eternal life, were such as they had 
learned in the teaching of their popular religion. 
There was one truth alone, which made them dis- 
tinctively Christian : belief in the Messiah, the Son 
of God, the Saviour of man. All the grand doc- 
trinal ideas of a Paul lay in this one belief, but they 
must come by the education of the Hebrew mind. 
We are very apt to lose sight of this, because we read, 
as they could not, the gathered writings of the New 
Testament canon. And now we can trace the steps of 
this growth. It was, then, first in the stirring contro- 
versy as to the reception of the Gentiles, that the Chris- 
tian truth of a salvation under other conditions than 
a national circumcision, and the letter of their law, took 
hold of the Church. It comes early. From that point 
of time when the new diaconate marks the presence of 
a large Gentile element, and finds in Stephen himself 
a more distinct statement than ever before of the an- 
nulling of Jewish law ; and again from the baptism of 
Cornelius, which called out such wonder both in Peter 
and the rest, we see the entrance of a more spiritual 
view. But the guidance was reserved for the great 
doctor of Tarsus, one of those constructive minds that 
appear always at the hour, like an Augustin or a 



6 Epochs in Church History. 

Luther, representing in their personal history the 
intellectual and moral strivings of their formative 
time ; yet in this case greater than them all, fusing in 
one the theological genius of the Latin and the 
strength of the German leader. With this opens the 
long history of early Christianity. The Council at 
Jerusalem marks the entrance of the question into the 
life of the whole Church. That Council in some respects 
is the most memorable of all — memorable, because it 
was clearly the representative body of Apostles, 
elders, and people, whatever theory Dr. Pusey may 
force the text into — the noblest pattern of the early 
polity in contrast with all others which represent the 
ecclesiastical authority alone — memorable as a proof 
of the wisdom, good sense and charity of that time, 
and in that respect one of the best evidences of a real 
unity. Nor can I regard it, as Reuss has done, as if it 
were no proof of organized authority. It was such. 
But it is the healthy, simple organization of the Body. 
It did not fetter its growth. It tided over the imme- 
diate trouble; but it could not settle all that lay in the 
surrender of the rite of circumcision, as, for instance, the 
interpretation of the Old Covenant, the binding form of 
the ritual, in fact all that knit the Jews with the past. 
And thus we see arise in the Church the two opposing 
tendencies : the Jewish Christian, and the Hellenistic 
mind on the side of spiritual faith. It is utterly unjust, 
as I shall show, to represent such Apostles as Peter or 



The Apostolic Age. 7 

James as in any sense leaders of a distinct opposition 
to St. Paul. But we cannot conceal from ourselves 
that there was a life long, bitter warfare of the tradi- 
tional party with the more liberal. Its history is only 
to be found by glimpses in the Acts of the Apostles'; 
for they are three-fourths an itinerary of St. Paul's 
missionary journeys. But in his letters, the living 
biography of the time, we have enough to show what 
strife he had for the first principles of evangelical 
faith, what misunderstandings and revolts in the 
churches he had planted, what backwardness on the 
part of even a Peter, and how slowly the truth won its 
victory. It ended in the ripe growth of a Christian 
truth ; but it did not end in the uprooting of the 
Jewish traditionalism; and only as we know it, can we 
trace the unity between this history and the age 
where it reappears. This is the worth of that history, 
to show us in that age not only the types of truth, 
but the types of error, rooted in this human nature of 
ours. 

Such was the greatest, most active struggle of the 
early Church. But before leaving the topic, I must 
briefly touch other discords, which although not ripe 
in that age, are of first moment in the next. We find 
in the letters of St. Paul emphatic notice of errorists, 
who appeared toward the close. Among the doctrines 
named in the Epistle to the Colossians are worship of 
angels, and neglecting of the body. It can hardly be 



8 Epochs in Church History. 

doubted that they are of the same school as those he 
notes in I. Timothy, i. 4, of myths and endless gen- 
ealogies, and I. Tim. iv. 1, 3, 7, of doctrines of demons, 
celibacy and abstinence from meats. But as we turn 
to the Epistle of St. John, we have again the sketch of 
other errorists, whose leading idea was the unreality of 
Christ's humanity. Although they may have been by 
no means of the same school, yet the ground of the 
last error is common to both. It originated from the 
one central idea of the intrinsic evil of matter. And 
thus we are warranted at least in the inference, that all 
these errors belong to the same source, and together 
mark the closing period of the Apostles. 

It is here, then, we gather up these facts ; each of 
which bears on our whole view. For here is the ground 
of all latest controversy with our modern criticism. I 
shall briefly state it. It is the position of the school 
of Baur and Renan, that the history of this Apostolic 
time is to a vast degree the fabric of the next age ; that 
the Pauline and the Petrine parties in the after time 
have forged many of these epistles, and that so far 
from any clear idea of its doctrine or life, we have at 
best a confused fragment. It is to this end they have 
found allusions in many epistles,, which in their view 
show that they are not products of that age. Now we 
may briefly answer, that if every one of the epistles 
called spurious or doubtful were swept away, those 
which they are compelled to leave as genuine : the Ro- 



The Apostolic Age. 9 

mans, I. and II. Corinthians, Galatians, I. Peter, James 
and John, are enough to construct the whole fabric of 
Apostolic doctrine and order. But, again, all the at- 
tempts to find specific allusions of a hostile sort in the 
epistles of James and Jude, or the Apocalypse, are ut- 
terly worthless. There is not one of them which shows 
in this particular the impress of the Anti-Pauline party 
of a later time, if we except that of II. Peter. We may 
admit all that just criticism demands as to the author- 
ship of any of these documents, but this guesswork is 
absurdity. We reach here the most pretentious of these 
arguments. It is affirmed that those later heresies of 
which I spoke, are clearly the Gnostic tenets of the 
second and third centuries, and therefore it is to that 
later time we are to ascribe the epistles of St. John, and 
those of St. Paul. But it is proved by our best modern 
critics that every one of these errors can be traced to 
the Jewish Theosophy before and during the Apos- 
tolic period. Gnosticism itself was only the ripened 
fruit of that earlier Eastern asceticism, and Manichae- 
ism, blended with Greek systems. The Apostle Paul 
himself has described these men as " false teachers of 
the law." The ideas of a series of creations, of inter- 
mediate powers or daimons ; the notion of matter as 
evil, of celibacy, of ascetic discipline ; and with these, 
that of the revelation of God in a merely apparent 
body, the germ of Docetism, — all are of Jewish kinship. 
And thus, although the older view of these errors as 



io Epochs in Church History. 

directly Gnostic is untenable, the criticism which re- 
jects these epistles is baseless. 

But I cannot dwell on this ; I only state the line of 
argument, that you may learn how truly at last our 
study guides us to satisfying results. 

What we learn, then, from these epistles is not the 
disharmony of the New Testament, but the growth 
of Christian thought, which came at last from the 
collision of the Jewish Christian and the Gentile 
parties. We see in the Apostolic Church in its 
degree, as with all ages, that the truth must come by 
mental and moral struggle. In this light we may 
rightly view in these various writings of the Apostles, 
as Neander suggested long ago in his " Planting and 
Training," the manifold elements of such a growth. 
There is no nobler view of Christianity. Its truth is 
one white beam refracted in these prismatic colors. 
We see arise in the Church a larger, grander view of 
its doctrine. It is this we trace mainly in the in- 
fluence of St. Paul. It is the striking feature, that as 
his travels make the larger part of the record, his let- 
ters are its whole literature. We cannot speak of his 
theology as a dogmatic system in our sense. It is 
because so often his writings have been looked at 
through the spectacles of Augustin or Calvin, not as 
interpreted by the life of his time, that his plain idea 
of an election of grace, instead of a race-election in 
Abraham, has been tortured into a cast-iron supralap- 



The Apostolic Age. u 

sarianism ; his natural illustration from Jewish sacri- 
fice into a theory of substitution. It is thus an older 
Unitarianism has called it a theological Christianity. 
It is thus Renan, in his latest work on St. Paul, has so 
presented him as creating the religion of the Church. 
But it is utter lack of appreciation of the mind of the 
Apostle. The key to his system, as has been well 
said by a noble writer on the apostolic theology, is in 
the personal experience of the man. He had passed 
through the whole process of Jewish training, had felt 
the inability of the Mosaic law to answer the needs of 
the conscience, had found in a personal faith in Christ 
the only ground of redemption from sin and the law 
of a living holiness. All his views are the expansion of 
this one truth. And thus we know the influence of the 
mind of Paul, not only on his own, but all ages, like that 
of the Reformation, when the same struggle has arisen 
between tradition and a living truth. It is in him we 
find the spiritual conception of all our Christian the- 
ology ; viz. the divinity of Christ, yet not in subtle def- 
inition, but as it speaks in the revelation of the Son of 
God, the Saviour ; the Atonement — as it speaks to the 
consciousness of man in the strife between the law and 
the need of a free grace ; the justifying faith, as it is 
the root of our holiness, and of the new life in the risen 
Christ. And in the same harmonious view we may 
recognize the influence of the other leading Apostles. 
As in a Paul we have the intellectual and spiritual life 



12 Epochs in Church History, 

of Christianity, so we have in Peter and James the 
practical side. There is no reasoning in them on these 
grander topics of the divine work of Christ, or the rela- 
tion of the Gospel to the nations ; but we see the best 
type of a Jewish Christian training, and we need not 
wonder at finding them in the day of controversy siding 
with the " men of the circumcision," from a conserva- 
tive dread of new things. But we must not forget that 
it is Peter in his Epistle, who speaks of all Christians 
as ''priests to God," a living temple, to offer " spir- 
itual sacrifices." It is the devout, simple apostle, 
who speaks, and the " Petrine element," as it is styled, 
was on its true side a healthy one in the body. A 
yet more marked character is seen in James. The mind 
which clung amidst the disputes of freedom and faith 
to the duties of Christianity, is another than that of a 
Paul in height and depth. But so far from any con- 
tradiction, I cannot even admit, as our received 
exposition has so long claimed since the day of Bishop 
Butler, that his epistle was written to counteract a 
growing Solifidianism. Its date, its whole drift, show 
that it was aimed at a class of Jewish Christians who 
held a formal faith in the Mosaic decalogue, and his 
distinct teaching is the OprjGHeia of the affections, the 
law manifested in charity, love of brethren, peaceable- 
ness. He views the fruits, St. Paul the root. And 
so we reach the last and noblest of these teachers, 
St. John. He stands apart in the whole character of 



The Apostolic Age. 13 

his thought, as his Gospel does ; no logician, no prac- 
tical moralist, but the teacher of the ethical life of 
the Gospel. And thus his influence has been less 
apparent than that of a Paul. But it is no less a 
distinct element in the thought of that age. I cannot 
here speak of the historic questions which have arisen 
as to his gospel. Nothing is stranger than the 
criticism which has charged him with giving us an 
ideal Christ instead of the simple Master of Matthew 
and Luke. His is, as Luther said, the theology of the 
heart. It is a theology which is sublimest because it 
is simplest. All problems are resolved by one moral 
truth. God is love ; the love of God to man is the 
essence of Christ's incarnation and sacrifice; the love 
of Christ in us is the love of our brethren. Sin is the 
death of the unloving soul ; love is life eternal. It is 
as the teacher of such a Christian ethics that St. John 
remains forever. 

It is thus, in a word, that we grasp the true concep- 
tion of the Apostolic doctrine. It came forth, this living 
growth, out of the mind and heart of the time. There 
is no new gospel. But it is the theology of the youth 
of the Church. We see undoubtedly some traditions 
of a Jewish theology mingled with the faith of the age, 
as the prevalent notion of a speedy Advent. But if we 
look at the great positive truths as they appear there, 
the Divine Humanity, the Atoning Sacrifice of Christ, 
the gift of the Spirit ; the union with Christ in a real 



14 Epochs in Church History. 

faith ; the promise of life ; these are all there. Its 
grandest power lies there, in that it represents on the 
one side the intensest struggle, and has in it the germs 
of all after thought. Yet it is the witness of the age, 
when Christianity is still one, when science and faith 
are not divorced ; and the only way in which we can 
understand it is when we behold there this unity, not 
the unity of a Nicene or any other symbol, but the 
unity of doctrine and life. 

And thus I pass to the outward organization. I shall 
not dwell on its details ; it is the same law of historic 
growth and life I wish to set forth. You saw it a 
simple household, united by a form of baptism and the 
supper, and an Apostolic order; with, however, the clear 
recognition of a divine life in the whole body, manifest 
in manifold gifts. In these elements lay the after 
growth. We shall begin with worship. It must be 
remembered that these Christians were still Jews, and 
continued such in their attendance on the Synagogue. 
The formation of a worship was thus a gradual thing ; 
and the natural law was to follow the synagogue sys- 
tem. Thus in the early Church we find the like feat- 
ures of reading of Scripture, to which were added by 
and by the Apostolic letters, the Psalms in chant, the 
prayers and exposition of Scripture by those who 
spoke as teachers or special prophetic gift. In pro- 
portion as their assemblies grew from the " €Kx\?j(?ia 
iv oixia" to more regular order, the changes suited to 



The Apostolic Age. 15 

the Christian faith took place. I turn thus to the two 
sacraments of the Church. We see in the rite of bap- 
tism its original meaning as the profession of faith in 
Father, Son and Holy Ghost. It is connected with 
the laying on of hands and the gift of the Spirit. Re- 
mission of sins is joined with it. But it must be noted 
that in every case where such spiritual gifts are named, 
the baptized persons are adult converts. The idea of 
penitence and personal fitness is clearly involved. Re- 
generation meant simply a birth out of the world into 
this new family of believers, to whom was pledged the 
grace of the Spirit. There is not a trace in the epistles 
of any such notion as appears in a Tertullian, of a 
special sacramental efficacy in the element ; or as in an 
Augustin, of the cleansing of original sin. This is utterly 
to misconceive the mind of that age ; and it is as much so 
to suppose it meant the Calvinistic notion of an inward 
sudden, abnormal transformation. Nor need we ask 
any further solution of the Apostolic use of infant bap- 
tism. It seems quite probable that the custom began 
at the close of this time, when there was a settled 
household Christianity. Did we, instead of defending 
a received custom, consider how far the proof of its 
use is from demonstration, how much there is on the 
other hand in the proof that in the later Church it was 
delayed often to mature years, and that the whole 
catechetical system involved instruction before it, we 
should be content with the wise wording of our arti- 



1 6 Epochs in Church History. 

cle, that it is " agreeable to the institution of Christ." 
It was the significant and beautiful rite, which grew 
out of the family life, it matters not when; and if we 
will so read the New Testament by its own light, not 
by any scholastic definition of sacramental grace on 
the one hand, or later definition of regeneration on the 
other, as some sudden, abnormal process of the Spirit, 
we shall not make a puzzle out of the simplest of rites. 
And so if we turn from all theories to the New Tes- 
tament we learn the same simple meaning in the sacra- 
ment of the Supper. I have said that it was in its 
primitive use a social feast, the symbol of fellowship 
with Christ and the brethren ; I need only add that it 
remained such until toward the time when St. Paul 
wrote to the Corinthian church. We know from this 
that it began to be abused ; and probably it was hence- 
forth more solemnly kept in the Church, while the 
Agapse became a separate custom. It was the " show- 
ing forth of the Lord's death." It was the centre of 
worship. And it is one of the most interesting of 
facts, that out of the oral service, probably then 
begun, there grew the whole family of stately litur- 
gies which have come down to us. But this of itself 
is the best witness of its character. There is not a 
trace of any theory of a Sacramental Presence ; of ele- 
mentation, or impanation, or any of the notions that 
grew into dogma out of the rhetorical imagery of later 
Fathers. Its only sacrifice was the evxocpwrla of a 



The Apostolic Age. 17 

loving heart ; and the sacrament was the symbol of a 
life of communion. 

But I pass to the Apostolic government. I shall 
trace its steps. We have seen that it was a body, 
which acknowledged the Apostles as the commissioned 
head, yet had in it the elements of a large and free 
growth in its manifold gifts. The first change is the 
appointment of the seven diakonoi. It sprang out of 
the wants of the Gentile converts. It was a growth. 
Our notion of a three-fold ministry, fixed in the body 
like an ecclesiastical trefoil in a cathedral, is to forget 
its meaning. The deacon was chosen by the body, 
and ordained by Apostolic hands. But he was a min- 
ister, not only an almoner, one who baptized and 
preached. As we proceed, we find another order 
named, that of presbyter. The etymology of the name 
reveals that it grew naturally out of the " Elder " of the 
synagogue. It is most significant that it is not priest. 
There is nothing borrowed from the Temple order or 
ritual. It is a strange proof of the power of words that 
this of elder, by a travesty of speech turned into priest, 
should have so long stood for the opposite of what it 
teaches. We gather thus the structure of the system. 
The Church established itself in great municipal cen- 
tres ; and while the Apostles had their general over- 
seership, there arose a college of elders. But there 
was not as now a system of separate churches. The 
parish was the whole cluster of Christian families. The 



1 8 Epochs in Church History. 

presbyterate was one, presiding together over the 
common interest. Some gave themselves especially to 
instruction, others to pastoral care. But besides these 
structural outlines of the ministry, there were other 
functions, in their nature passing, yet of great activity ; 
prophets, not seers, but inspired preachers, both men 
and women ; interpreters ; healers ; evangelists, proba- 
bly missionary preachers; and further deaconesses, and 
it has been supposed presbyteresses, fellow workers in 
the churches. It is simply impossible for us to gain 
any clear idea of all these functions ; and the point I 
wish to insist on is, that they were the natural growths 
of an age of formation. All the attempts to construct 
theories of a fourfold ministry out of such passages as 
Ephesians, iv. n, is proof of wasted ingenuity. The 
one grand lesson for us to learn is the power of that 
primitive life to create a manifold activity. 

It is now out of this formative period we see arise, 
toward the close of the Apostolic time, a more regular 
unity. In the Epistle to the Corinthians we have al- 
ready a glimpse of the orderly change passing over 
the worship. The time for extraordinary gifts was 
passing ; confusion had divided the assembly, and a 
more settled system was needed. That which took 
place in Corinth is the sign of this construction on a 
larger scale. The churches had expanded. It was no 
longer possible to remain under a general apostolate, 
but there must be a permanent overseership in the great 



The Apostolic Age. 19 

municipal cities. We see in the Pastoral Epistles the 
first appointment of two eminent men over the churches 
of Ephesus and Crete. In these are the outlines of 
a fixed order ; a chief minister, who ordains pres- 
byters and deacons, and arranges his specific domain. 
It is the draft of what we call a diocesan episcopate. 
Nor can we read it without admitting that it betokens 
the rise of a new, compact organization. To say that 
the rise of such an order was from the growing aris- 
tocracy of the Church in the next later age, is merely 
proof of the love of a Presbyterian or Democratic the- 
ory more than of the facts of the New Testament. It 
is just as unhistoric when the churchman attempts to 
rear from the slender material of fact his grand edi- 
fice of a Divine. Apostolic authority as transmitted to 
this diocesan episcopate. It is to ignore the growing 
life of the Church of Christ, and turn it into a the- 
ocracy, a caste. Nothing is stranger than that such a 
notion, the very Ttpdorov ipevdos of the Roman priestly 
state, can be called a church principle. It is the cari- 
cature of all the facts. We may fairly infer from the 
Pastoral Epistles the rise of a diocesan order, but never 
that this took place by Apostolic appointment in all 
cases. The fact that the name Bishop is only another 
name for Presbyter, and remains so throughout the 
New Testament, can never be explained on such a 
theory. Historic justice points to one only satisfying 
reason, as our candid divines from Field to Lightfoot 



20 Epochs in Church History. 

grant, that the early diocesan Bishop was in many 
cases chosen by the college of presbyters, and hence 
the name actually became limited to him. I rest the 
case there. No chain, however long, is stouter than 
its weakest link ; and here the link happens to be the 
first, and indeed the staple whereon the whole hangs. 
In a word the New Testament gives us no theory of 
an absolute transmission of authority, but a historic 
order, growing out of the life of the whole body. 

Such is the view in which that creative age comes 
before us, as we read it by its own light. One growth 
in doctrine and order; one living unity, not a theolog- 
ical system, not an ecclesiastical mechanism, but one 
Body of Christ. 

And thus, if you have followed me in my rapid 
sketch, you know the true wealth of Apostolic Chris- 
tianity for all ages. It teaches us the real unity of 
faith and fellowship. We go back to that childhood 
of our religion ; we repeat that Apostles' Creed, which 
though written and enlarged in later days was without 
a doubt the transcript of the simple oral confession 
of this primitive day; we feel, as we repeat it, that 
we are as yet in the time which knew no subtle defini- 
tions, when no errors had called forth even the formula 
of Nice ; when men held the plain historic facts of the 
Gospel. And we thank God for the fact that above all 
other noble features of our beloved communion it plants 
us there, that it asks no other confession of its baptized 



The Apostolic Age. 21 

believers than this ; and while it has its articles for its 
scholars, it gives this to the people as the one rule of 
faith. It only sums up the New Testament. And by 
this standard it teaches us to test all later systems. 
We may accept them, or reject them, but we accept 
them only as they are proven by most sure warranty 
of Holy Scripture. No Procrustean measure of a 
Patristic theology, or a later one of Calvin or Arminius 
turns our simple faith into a tradition of men. No 
theory of a " concurrent authority " changes our per- 
sonal belief in Christ into an acceptance of a formal 
decree. It is our charter forever. And that Apostolic 
age is the type forever of our living organization. It 
is the fountain head, where we drink of the waters before 
they pass into the more turbid streams of history. 
We can study the ages afterward with a just apprecia- 
tion of their truth. But we have here the dividing line 
between the time when the sacraments and the ministry 
were still what Christ had left them, and the time when 
fantastic theories and ecclesiastical systems had dis- 
tinctly modified them. This is the immortal heritage 
of that child-like time. It is the mind, the heart of that 
childhood we are to keep amidst the changes of age. 

And thus, in the next place, we know by the same 
study the error of every age which has sought to find 
in that first Christianity a full-grown pattern of the 
Church of God. It is to mistake the costume of the 
child for the life of the man. It is to lose the deepest 



22 Epochs in Church History. 

lesson of its growing youth. I cannot number these mis- 
takes. History ever repeats them. It is thus that among 
the ancient churches of the East, and in the Latin also, 
there linger those usages of the past ; as the Copt uses 
his chrism and exorcism, and the Greek insists on his 
unleavened bread. It is thus the Moravian will keep 
the Agapae ; the Baptist make an essential mark «of a 
divine religion the quantity of water used in Baptism, 
while he forgets that the Apostles had no baptisteries 
or india-rubber bathing suits. And in another shape 
it is thus that the community system of early times has 
been revived again and again, not only by Christian 
sects, but even by a St. Simon, who renounced all 
Christian truth, and only kept a fancied pattern of a 
social order without property. But I pass to graver 
instances : it is the self-same error which has led 
to the whole battle since the Reformation. Each has 
sought in the New Testament for a perfect model, and 
as each can find in the transition time some features 
like his own, and so ample room for guess work, the 
Presbyterian has found parity, the Independent auton- 
omy of churches, the Churchman his Episcopate. Yet 
neither has seen that whatever the facts, they can only 
settle a venerable precedent, never a principle; that 
to suppose a polity, fitted to the youth of our religion, 
to be the absolute law of all times, is a sectarianism as 
palpable as to insist on immersion. I know that in 
saying this, I offend many champions of our commun- 



The Apostolic Age. 23 

ion. But I urge no radicalism, I give the sound 
church principle of all our great Reformed divines. 
It is one of the most curious facts of history, that our 
modern Anglicans stand on the very ground of the 
older Puritans. It was the fierce outcry of Cartwright 
against Prelacy, that it was not prescript in the New 
Testament, and therefore Anti-Christ ; and in his 
answer, Whitgift, the type-churchman of his day, 
claimed that " to hold it of necessity to keep the exact 
pattern of the Apostles " is a " rotten pillar." That 
was the ground of Hooker, the most misjudged jurist 
of the Church. He claims a primitive origin, a historic 
validity, no more ; the right of the Church to ordain 
ceremonies, not contrary to God's word, and no more. 
In our day the Anglican is only another Cartwright, 
and calls all other ministry than his Anti-Christ. I 
am content to stand with Whitgift and Hooker. 

And if you have thus grasped the principle, I need 
ask no more. You will learn to read this primitive 
age, not as if I had shown some slab of preadamite 
rock, with its gigantic bird tracks, its fossil twigs of a 
flora not now on the earth, but a history which lives 
for us. The childhood of Christianity is past. We 
cannot keep all the features of its early worship and 
life. Other work is ours ; other strifes of faith, other 
problems of order, other growths of thought, and of 
institutions have followed in the long interval. But that 
true childhood of the man who has kept the faith, and 



24 Epochs in Church History, 

purity of heart ; that immortal childhood, which still 
looks out of the eyes of an age, gray in wisdom, 
and ripened in toil ; gazing backward, yet forward with 
the hopes of which the Apostle speaks, not of untried 
infancy, but of experience ; that is the immortal child- 
hood which links us with the first age. It lives in the 
heritage of the word. It lives in the grand historic 
landmarks we cherish. But it lives above all else in 
the spirit it bequeaths us. That is the noblest succes- 
sion. As the Lord said of the great herald of his 
coming, " this, if ye knew it, is Elias who should 
come." So it is this life of the great teachers and 
leaders, which ever repeats itself in history. It is 
Paul who, when the Church cleaves to her circum- 
cision, speaks through the burning lips of a Luther 
the justifying faith which quickens the new age, It 
is John who, amidst the strifes of doctrine and the 
unloving days of sect, calls us to the love of Christ that 
is the soul of doctrine and the bond of unity. And so 
that first age shall live, shall speak, shall quicken us 
with the undying hope that the kingdom of our God 
and Lord shall be in the dim future, as in the earliest 
past, no dream, but a reality. 



THE NICENE AGE. 

It is of the first age of intellectual and social growth 
in Christendom of which I treat, when the religion of 
Christ passed from its early cradle in Judea to the 
throne of the world. That period to many is little 
more than a waste of 500 years, covered with the fos- 
sil remains of creeds and church councils. It may 
well appear so, if we have read it only in the histori- 
ans of the past type like Gibbon, or the ecclesiastics 
who are busied merely with its dogmatic strifes. But 
if we read in it the education of the new world in the 
faith of one living God, if we see in these centuries of 
struggle the way by which the mind of the scholar as 
well as the humblest believer came at last out of the 
decaying idolatries and worn-out scepticisms into a 
nobler truth, and if we trace yet more the might of 
such a truth in the new creation of all these forms 
of social life, the purity, the freedom, the humanity that 
makes Christianity one with civilization, it is indeed 
full of meaning. We sail to-day along the silent sands 
of the Nile, and the broken pillars of an Osiris' cham- 
ber tell us the life of Pharaohs. The Nicene Church is 
2 2^ 



26 Epochs in Church History, 

the monument on the sands of the greater Nile of 
Christian history, the mysterious stream that has 
rolled through the eighteen centuries, turbid but un- 
broken, its very slime a Delta of fresh growth. It is 
the opening chapter of the new world. This is its 
interest for us. 

But, besides this, there are two most weighty ques- 
tions involved in the study of Ante-Nicene and Ni- 
cene Christianity, which specially touch the criticism of 
the latest time. It is in this age that our keenest 
scholars of the school of Baur have sought to prove 
their theory, that this system of Christian doctrine 
was only the development of the Greek Platonism 
under new conditions. And here, on the opposite 
side, our new Catholics, of the Oxford type, have 
found their golden age of a pure, unbroken, ideal 
church. We need, therefore, to study with honest 
eyes the truth and the error, the real worth of this early 
time for history, yet also its grave defects. I shall en- 
deavor to do this. I am not, as I have already said, to 
dwell on the details of the long record, but to give you 
a clear idea of its great features of thought and life. 

Let us, then, consider the character of Christianity 
as it entered on its work of regenerating the world, 
and the conditions of its growth. We must, as I 
showed you in my first lecture on the law of historic 
development, clearly recognize the fact that in the 
order of the historic Providence, which has guided the 



The Nicene Age. 27 

whole, its growth was knit with the culture of the race, 
to whose influence the mind of Europe was most in 
debted in the past. The seed was sown by the Di- 
vine Sower in the corner of Judea, but the field was 
the world. If now we look at the Church of Christ on 
the threshold of this new era, we see the problem be- 
fore it. It had been left with the closing day of the 
Apostles, already on its first stage of organization. 
The long internal struggle between Jewish and Gen- 
tile elements, necessary to its catholic character, was 
well-nigh ended. It had passed out from its Mosaic 
Christianity into a clear recognition of the larger life 
beyond such a race religion ; and with this change there 
had come the beginnings of defined doctrinal thought 
through the writings of the one thinker, St. Paul ; there 
had come a germinal unity of creed and order. But 
there was as yet only a beginning. There was no New 
Testament canon. There was no acknowledged symbol. 
There was no diocesan organization in any such sense 
as that of the Nicene time. Apostolic Christianity 
was neither, as the destructive school of Baur will 
caricature it, a mere battle of disjointed atoms, after- 
ward put together by post-Apostolic invention ; nor 
was it that perfect, divinely given model of a theologi- 
cal and ecclesiastical system, dreamed of by Church 
divines. Either theory is unhistoric. It was simply 
a church that had passed nobly through its earliest 
Jewish-Christian struggle, and was in that made ready 



28 Epochs in Church History. 

for the greater work of the future. I cannot insist too 
strongly on this point. We have done no greater harm, 
alike in our interpretation of Scripture and of Church 
history, than in drawing this imaginary line between 
Apostolic history, as if it were a completed fact, and the 
age after it. We have lent to both a Baur and a New- 
man the most plausible argument of a false theory of 
development, because we have denied the true. If we 
see in the Church of the New Testament the opening of 
its whole historic life, we shall read its own record with 
a knowledge of its real connection with the after times. 
And now we can pass to this great age of the form- 
ing Church. It had won its first triumph. It had 
shown that in the nature of its truth and institution it 
was not to remain a little household at Jerusalem, 
but to become the centre of light and life for the 
world. It had opened its doors to the Gentile. But 
as yet its converts were among the less educated of 
the people, who were won by their devout need of a 
faith purer than the idolatry around them. The task 
was now a far larger and deeper one. It must come 
in contact with Gentile culture. Let us look at the 
conditions of that problem. Let us ask what the 
civilization was, with which this contest of four cent- 
uries was to begin. It is a picture of the mental and 
moral decay of the world I have to draw, yet one of 
the most living colors. The age when the religion of 
Christ entered into this larger field, was marked by the 



The Nicene Age. 29 

fact that all the old civilizations were broken by the 
vast absorbing world-empire of Rome. All lay in 
ruins. Yet, with the series of conquests from Alex- 
ander to the Caesars, there had gone everywhere the 
new life of commerce, of social and intellectual culture. 
It was above all Greek culture which had educated the 
East and the West. It had its schools of new science 
at Alexandria, even while Athens was on the wane. 
Here, then, we have the key to the feature which 
especially concerns us, the decline of the old religions. 
Each of the ancient forms of Polytheism was a national 
outgrowth ; and the mythology, this dream of the 
fanciful childhood, faded before the general culture of 
this ripe age. Heathenism had reached the last stage 
of philosophic criticism. But the philosophy, which 
uprooted the superstition, did not supply faith. It 
had lost that devout feeling which led Plato, in the 
noblest age of Greek thought, to seek some deeper, 
sacred meaning in the decaying myths. In its two 
greatest schools we have the image of the culture of. 
that time. We see in the stoic, from Seneca to Epic- 
tetus and Antoninus, the moral grandeur, which even in 
the utter loss of faith clung to the law of absolute duty. 
But if we seek the best picture of the men of letters, 
we must read the dialogues of the Epicurean Lucian, 
the ribald wit, the merciless laugh alike at the altar 
worship, and the solemn " doctors of the stoic few." 
Platonism, again, presents in this age another and 



30 Epochs in Church History. 

strange feature. It had dwindled, after the time of 
Aristotle, into a cold dialectic scepticism. But now 
there arose among more devout thinkers a reaction 
against the scientific unbelief. It found its voice in 
the new Platonism ; and to understand the power of 
Christianity, we must see the meaning of this singular 
element in the thought of that mingled age. I cannot 
better describe it than in the famous appeal of St. Paul. 
It was an altar to " an unknown God." It was a des- 
pairing, final outcry, uttered alike by the devout sage 
and the perplexed worshipper, for some sure knowl- 
edge. Greek wisdom had no answer, and the mind of 
these men turned to a mystic eclecticism. The old 
theosophies of the East had been opened to Western 
thought. All the fancies of Persian and Egyptian 
worship, of magic, astrology, necromancy, the wild 
ideas which afterward played such a part in the 
Gnostic systems, were rife in this latter day of hea- 
thenism. We are not to imagine that the intellectual 
or religious life of that world was decayed. Far from 
it. The past faith and worship were decayed ; but 
there was never in the world's history a time when 
there was such restless movement of mind and heart. 

It is here, then, we understand the conditions in 
which the religion and Church of Christ began its work. 
And here we can know at once the secret of its power. 
It taught that truth which the ancient wisdom had 
reached after in vain amidst the decay of the ancient 



The Nicene Age. 31 

worship ; a positive faith in the one manifested God. 
It taught what was at once the highest truth of science, 
yet the simplest personal fact for the believer ; the 
unity and spirituality of such a Being. But, beyond 
this, it taught in this truth of the revealed God, the 
Maker and Father of men, the unity of mankind, the 
promise of a pure civilization, which should be based 
on the relation of men to each other as members of 
one body. Such a truth inspired a love of virtue above 
the easy eudaemonism of the Epicurean, yet gave a 
human heart to duty beyond the Stoic fatalism. Its 
conception of a Supreme Being was as lofty as that of 
Plato, yet it did not end in the fanciful mysticism of 
Platonism. And so to the mind of the people as 
to the philosopher, the truth of this Incarnate Son 
of God was a revelation indeed. It united the pure 
monotheism of the Hebrew with the belief that lay 
beneath the gross polytheistic fancy, the need of a per- 
sonal and revealed Deity. Philosophy had one exoteric 
worship for the crowd, and another esoteric creed for 
the sage. Christianity united them. We have here, 
then, our truest solution of that wonderful fact of the 
success of this religion, humble in its birth, without 
rank or influence, over the ancient world. In it we 
have the fusion of all that was best in the Semitic and 
the Greek civilization ; and it came at the fulness of 
time in the history of mankind, when only this fusion 
was possible, when Roman conquest, commerce, and 



32 Epochs in Church History. 

culture made the world ready. Yet if we thus see in 
it such a development, it leads us surely to a stronger 
faith in its divine character. I need not repeat here 
the famous argument of Gibbon, to explain it by nat- 
ural causes. All the superficial reasons he has given 
are long since surpassed by the keener criticism of the 
modern school. It is the position of Baur, in his mas- 
terly sketch of the social, scientific, and religious phe- 
nomena of that age, that Christianity was only the 
historic product of it. But his whole line of argument 
is to my view the best proof of the opposite. We an- 
swer him, as we do the modern evolutionist, who finds 
in the harmony of the cosmic forces only a blind play 
of molecules. If we find in those decaying elements of 
faith, philosophy, social order, gathered in the sepul- 
chre of a Roman empire, no higher life to quicken 
them, the result would have been impossible. The 
truth of the unity of God was not the product of 
scientific culture. Philosophy, as we have seen, did 
not reach it. It ended in denial. Heathen religion 
did not reach it. It ended in " an unknown God." 
Christianity alone gave it. 

With this view I can enter clearly on the sketch I 
propose of the doctrinal and ecclesiastical growths of 
the Nicene age. I shall begin with its theology, for it 
is above all in its influence on the belief of mankind 
that we find the special task of early Greek Chris- 
tianity. The Latin Church of the next age had 



The Nicene Age. 33 

a more practical mission. But let us grasp clearly at 
the outset what we mean by Nicene theology. It 
conveys to many minds little else than a word-battle, 
a shadow fight of centuries over the dogmas of the 
Trinity, a question between Athanasian and Arian 
over a diphthong. If it were this, I should not spend 
long pages on it. But if you have seized the guiding 
thought of my lecture, you have its meaning. It was 
the task of this earliest age to teach the truth of God 
as Christ revealed Him. The Incarnation was thus the 
first foundation principle of the Christian doctrine. 
It came first in the order of intellectual thought as well 
as of belief. All other truths of a divine revelation, 
of the nature of man, of moral evil, of redemption, of 
life, were only further expositions of this central fact. 
And thus the Nicene theology from beginning to end 
was chiefly busied with this ; although its great think- 
ers contributed much of deep and pure reasoning in 
the whole range of the new learning. Theology, the 
doctrine of God, thus gained its name from the special 
study of that time. It opens the great cycle of 
Christian science. 

But, again, it was in this deepest question of 
Theology that the Christian mind must have its 
meeting point with the culture of the classic world. 
The problem of God, of absolute Being, the relation 
of the phenomenal world, above all of man as an intel- 
ligence, to a moral nature, as it is always the highest 



34 Epochs in Church History. 

problem for science even in an age when physical 
studies strive to push it aside^this problem sums the 
philosophic thought of Greece from Thales to Plato and 
Proclus. Christianity must answer it. It must lead the 
ancient wisdom from its endless abstractions into posi- 
tive truth; but in doing so it must enter with intellect- 
ual mastery into the whole range of subtle, conflict- 
ing ideas which rent the Greek schools. A Christian 
theology was the necessary step in education. The 
shallow naturalist, like the author of the Conflict of 
Science and Religion, who knows much about the 
spectroscope, but little about the mind of any century 
before the nineteenth, brings against this Christian age 
the charge of having put back by its cloudy metaphys- 
ics the brilliant progress in astronomy and geometry 
already begun in the Greek schools of Alexandria. 
But the charge is easily answered. Geometry could 
not give the Greek or Roman mind the highest truth 
it needed. It found, as our physicists perhaps will 
find, that the knowledge of atoms and motion will not 
supply the want of the one living God. The Nicene 
Church did not make theology ; it only entered into 
the real mental and moral conflict of its time. But, 
again, we may thus understand the special direction 
which the Greek theology took in its scientific growth. 
It was distinctly Platonic in its ideas and method 
of reasoning. Nor is the reason hard to find. Plato- 
nism among all the schools of Greece furnished the 



The Nicene Age. 35 

most positive doctrine of God, as the Eternal Being - , 
the one ground of absolute truth, good, beauty above 
phenomena. It came nearest to the truth of Chris- 
tianity on its intellectual and moral side. And thus it 
was most natural that well nigh all the thinkers — 
Clement of Alexandria, Justin, Origen — who shaped the 
early theology, were either taught or were in sympathy 
with the philosophic training of the Platonic school. 
Epicurean men of letters scorned it. Stoics were 
seldom won by Christianity, although there is such 
marvellous likeness between St. Paul and Seneca in 
many ethical precepts. The fatalism of the Stoic 
found no kindred with the truth of a Divine Father, 
and the freedom of men. Even the philosophy of 
Aristotle did not enter into the Greek Christian 
thought, although it shaped the whole scholastic mind 
of the Latin Church in later time : and the fact is very 
striking, as it shows us the grand difference between 
the more living spirit of this early Greek theology and 
the logical petrifaction of Aquinas. But yet more, the 
one great truth of the living God, the Creator and 
Ruler, had already in an earlier Jewish form entered 
into the noblest Greek culture, through the teaching 
of Philo in Alexandria. We have in Philo one of the 
gifted minds, without whom we cannot understand 
Nicene theology. In him we see the most fanciful of 
allegorical interpreters, who turned the Old Testament 
into a series of symbolic myths, and bequeathed 



36 Epochs in Church History. 

through Origen the same fatal method for the New ; 
yet at the same time his profound genius brought the 
monotheistic ideas of the Hebrew into contact with 
the speculative thought, before foreign to his own race. 
It is in Philo that the stern, solitary Jehovah of the 
ancient covenant becomes the one, living, spiritual 
Essence, . who manifests his thought through his 
Logos, his emanating Word, to the reason of men. 
Moses and the seers are the revealers of the divine 
truths, embodied under the outward form of Hebrew 
tradition and ritual. All the lofty thoughts of a 
Plato, a Pythagoras, a Socrates, were only the voices 
of this one Eternal Reason ; echoes of the one 
revelation. 

Here, then, is the point of view from which we 
must study the growth of Christian theology. It gives 
us the true idea of its development. I am anxious at 
this point to state it clearly, for without it we cannot 
have the clue to the labyrinth of dogmatic history. 
There is on the one hand the traditional church posi- 
tion, which denies all scientific growth in theology, and 
looks on the Nicene dogma as a doctrinal deposit, 
handed down in a church casket, to be opened at the 
Nicene Council. It is the view affirmed by divines, 
from Bull to Mohler. It claims unity in Trinitarian 
doctrine from the Apostles to Nice ; but it forgets 
that while there was unity in the living belief in 
Christ, the belief was not and could not be formulated 



The Nicene Age. 37 

in symbol, save by the long struggle of Christian 
thought ; and therefore we must find much crude and 
even disjointed opinion. The essential truth of God in 
Christ is one ; theology is progressive. But the other 
view is that of the Anti-trinitarian school, from its 
earlier form to the more scientific theory of Baur. 
The Nicene dogma of the Trinity is the product of 
Alexandrian Platonism ; it can be traced clearly back 
to the idea of the Logos, the Creative Word in Philo 
and in Plotinus. It is the wedding of monotheism with 
the semi-pantheism of the Greek mind. But if you 
have followed my analysis, you have the key to the 
error of this theory. The Platonic philosophy supplied 
the method of speculative thought, but it did not sup- 
ply the Christian truth of the Incarnation. The faith in 
such a Christ, as it is stated by St. Paul, contains all 
that the Nicene symbol expresses. It is not even true 
that we are to find the source of the sublime preface 
of St. John's Gospel in any Alexandrian teaching. We 
know to-day by the keener researches into the doctrinal 
systems of Palestine, that the conception of God as the 
Creative Wisdom, the inbreathing Word, was ripened 
from the day of the majestic "Book of Wisdom " in 
the Jewish mind. In a word, a Christian theology 
found in the Alexandrian Platonism the living form of 
expression, because the truth of the Incarnation is one 
with that highest conception of the human intellect, 
which demands one Spiritual Being, Who is yet the 



38 Epochs in Church History. 

Creative Word. Undoubtedly it took with this form 
some of the mistaken notions, and the abstract meth- 
ods of the Platonic system, as we shall see all along 
from Athanasius to Augustin, but it took its deep, 
abiding truth. Reason and faith, philosophy and the 
Gospel met in the doctrine of the Incarnation. 

Let us turn, then, with this critical key to the rich 
literature of that early age. It is indeed the best 
proof of its change from Jewish-Christian to. Greek 
culture, which we find in the interval from the end of 
the Apostolic time to this. The sub-Apostolic period 
for nearly half a century is a silent one. We have 
the first light on the growth of the Church in the so- 
called Apostolic Fathers. But while they are of im- 
portance, as we shall see, in showing us the organiza- 
tion which had become defined within this time, there 
is little sign of intellectual life. It was the day of 
heroic martydom and simple piety. There is, how- 
ever, one feature in the Epistles of Clemens and Barna- 
bas clearly bearing on our line of study. Although 
no distinctly Pauline thought appears, and there is 
much childlike Rabbinism in the interpretation of the 
Old Testament, we see that the strife of Jewish and 
Gentile parties is almost wholly over. The spiritual 
nature of the Gospel, the need of a living faith and 
real righteousness are fully affirmed. It is plain that, 
while the Judaizing element remains and must re- 
main as a narrow traditional spirit always, leading to 



The Nicene Age. 39 

a copy of the past in priesthood and ritual, the Church 
had become Catholic. But now we see a fresh birth 
of intellectual as well as spiritual life. It is the sign of 
its vitality that together, within one hundred years, such 
minds as Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Justin Mar- 
tyr and Irenaeus appear; minds quite unlike in some 
lines of theological thought, yet one in their chief aim 
and influence on the culture of the Church. We see 
that in the former half of the third century the 
Christian truth of the Incarnation had entered into the 
Greek mind. It called out these earnest thinkers, hid 
in the philosophic schools, but hungering after a unity 
of reason with living faith ; and it is in them we have 
the first teachers of the theology which busied the 
Church to the close of the Greek age. I do not mean 
that all the teaching of the Church was in this one di- 
rection. Far from it. There are to be found several 
who represent the traditional learning. We see in 
Papias a crude revival of the Jewish-Christian millen- 
narian fancy. We have in Tertullian one of the most 
fertile minds, joining the hardest dogmatic creed, the 
material view of the Divine nature, utterly hostile to 
Greek thought, with a wild Montanism. But both 
he on the traditional side, and Cyprian, the great 
organizer of the Episcopate, belong to that West 
African culture, which had far more to do with 
the shaping of the Latin than the Greek Church. It 
is in the writers of whom I have spoken we find the 



40 Epochs in Church History. 

scientific thought. Yet we are not to look in them 
for any unity of system. The literature of this first 
period is almost wholly in apologetics, called forth by 
attacks of Ethnic philosophy, or in refutations of Gnos- 
tic heresy. Origen alone has given in his treatise napi 
apxoov an approach to a systematic theology ; and 
that, although admirable in dialectic skill, is largely 
vitiated by the allegorical interpretation which he 
borrowed from Philo. The same want of critical science 
is seen in all the scholars of this time. Their ideas 
of Sacred or Ethnic history are worthless in this re- 
spect. Nor is there any thorough treatment of the ques- 
tions of anthropology or soteriology, although there is, 
in my view, a far truer tone of thought as to the moral 
freedom of man, the capacity of knowledge and good- 
ness, than in the dogmas of Augustin. Unity in the cen- 
tral truth of the Incarnation is the meeting-point of 
these Fathers. Yet even here we must guard against 
the misleading view of their exact agreement in the 
subtle definitions of the Athanasian time, when the 
theologian must walk across the scimetar edge of a 
word into the paradise of orthodoxy. Origen leans 
more to the idea of subordination in the divine nature 
of Christ. Clement is nearer to the strict unity of 
essence. It is when we study their position, as it 
united them in the contest with the Greek-Pagan sys- 
tems, that we know their positive work. The personal 
unity of God as a spiritual Creator and Providence, is 



The Nicene Age. 41 

maintained as well against polytheism as the panthe- 
ism which underlies the grosser religion, the notion of 
anima mundi symbolized in nature-worship. It was 
equally defended against the vague theism which 
ended in Neo-Platonic fancies, or the atheism which 
identified God with an eternal matter. God is the 
one self-conscious Maker of the worlds. His Logos is 
the pure, spiritual Power, eternally active, forming all 
things after the idea of the divine mind, present to the 
reason and conscience of men as the archetypal rea- 
son and goodness. Christ is thus the perfect medium 
between the divine, spiritual Being, and his spiritual 
creatures. Yet in this higher view of a Christian phi- 
losophy these thinkers could find a reconciliation with 
all truth in the Greek learning. It was indeed with 
most uncritical study they declared that Pythagoras 
and Plato had borrowed from the Hebrew books ; yet 
that absurdity was joined in some of them with a 
truly spiritual idea. Justin held that the Logos Sper- 
matikos spake in the noblest of the Ethnic sages. 
Socrates was a Christian before Christ. Clement in- 
cludes among the true Gnostics all the wise, Christian 
or Pagan, who revealed the knowledge of God, because 
the divine Nous was in them. We have here the pro- 
found anticipation of the truth, which to-day solves 
the newly opened problem of comparative religion. 
And we have the secret of the new Christian science, 
which in that time replaced the Greek Paganism. It 



42 Epochs in Church History. 

was at once a nobler philosophy and a positive 
belief. 

But we must turn, equally, to the contest of the 
Fathers with the Gnostic systems. I cannot here 
dwell on the strange variety of them ; but I must show 
the character of this phase in Christian development. 
We have seen already how the Eastern theosophy 
entered in the decay of the Greek culture. It was not 
strange that it should mingle also in the formative 
time of Christian thought. We have the germs of 
such theosophic tendency in the day of St. John and 
St. Paul, as we know from their epistles. I do not 
here discuss the theory of the Tubingen critics, who 
would overturn the date of these epistles as written in 
the later, full-grown Gnostic period. It is enough 
to say that the thorough study of Jewish theological 
sects has, in my view, shown those Errorists to have 
been of a Jewish, ascetic school, earlier than these of 
whom I here speak. But in this century the influx of 
Gnostic systems reached its height. Amidst the fan- 
tastic chaos of their sects, we may conclude with Baur 
that the common ground of them all was a mystic 
dualism. The Absolute Being was conceived of as an 
unknowable, incommunicable essence. All created 
things were of the impure, evil matter, outside the 
divine sphere, passing by a series of debasements to 
the corrupt, material world of men. The Redeem- 
er, the Christ, was a divine Power, which descended 



The Nicene Age. 43 

into the dark matter to give light and life. All souls 
which by the purifying of the mind and freedom from 
this gross human life had become Gnostics, illuminated 
and holy, were partakers of this divine spirit. It must 
be clear, even from this glimpse of the ground-ideas 
of Gnosticism, how much there was in that early day 
of fascination for fanciful minds in this mystic system 
of the universe. There were many points of likeness 
with Christian thought. Origen's own theory of an 
occult, spiritual meaning in Scripture, led readily to 
the notion of an esoteric Gnosis, Clement enlarges 
often on the superiority of the true Gnostics, the divinely 
taught, to the vulgar minds. We need not wonder 
at the influence of these sects, and the long struggle 
of Christian truth with one after another of their 
errors. Manichaeism, one of the latest types, was 
held by Augustin in his youth ; and in our day it has 
been praised by a thinker like J. S. Mill, as the only 
profound theory which can give escape from atheism. 
As we study the Gnostic errors in this light, we shall 
see another, perhaps the most prominent, feature in 
their relation to early Christianity. Indeed it goes 
far, I think, to refute the critical novelty of Baur as to 
the authenticity of the epistles of St. Paul. We have 
in the germinal heresies touched in the New Testament", 
as I said, a Jewish type. But in the Gnosticism of this 
Greek age the spirit is chiefly anti-Jewish. Doubtless 
in the Clementine Homilies there may be a relic of 



44 Epochs in Church History. 

the magic and necromantic elements of Palestinian 
growth ; and in certain later systems. But in the the- 
osophy of most of these teachers, especially in Mar- 
cion, there is a strong antagonism to the whole religion 
of the Old Covenant. Jehovah is a sort of Ahriman, 
a creator of the evil, earthly world. The rude criti- 
cism of Marcion, and his arbitrary choice of some of 
the Pauline epistles, clearly show how, in the unsettled 
state of the canon of Scripture, such a movement 
could ally itself w r ith an extreme Gentile party. In a 
word, we must not regard the Gnostic movement as 
merely a philosophic misgrowth outside the Church, 
but as a morbid tendency which had to work itself 
off in the healthy growth of the Church. 

Here, then, we know the real worth of this theolog- 
ical conflict. In it the practical and sound life of Chris- 
tian truth was developed. The root of Gnosticism 
was the substitution of a theosophy, a fantastic system 
of the universe, for the plain revelation of God in Christ. 
The nature of God as the one Maker and Father of 
all, the nature of the world as the work of a good 
Beine, of evil as no nature but of moral origin, of the 
divine humanity of Christ as the union of God with 
man, of the Christian life as a plain code of belief and 
duty, — all these were perverted. An esoteric mysti- 
cism, based on a caricature of some of the spiritual ideas 
of Christianity, threatened the Church. To clear up 
these fatal errors was the aim of the Fathers. Knowl- 



The Nicene Age. 45 

edge and faith, Pistis and Gnosis, were to be recon- 
ciled. Nothing in the range of theology is more ad- 
mirable than their statements. The grand doctrine 
of St. John, that " God is Light, and no darkness at 
all ; " no unknown Bathos, but the Father revealed in 
the moral attributes of love and holiness in the person 
of the holy Son, is the ground of their reasoning. This 
moral conception is applied to the whole problem of 
human life. The world was good, and evil was not in 
the nature of matter, but in the moral perversion of the 
divine design. The Incarnation was the recognition 
of the original goodness, the true union of the divine 
with the earthly. It was by no intellectual Gnosis of 
occult mysteries, but by the simple faith of mind and 
heart, men were true believers. It was by no ascetic 
denial of nature and life as evil, but by the new birth 
into a life of holy duty, that men were made one with 
God. The Church was no little sect of ilhiminati, of 
elect mystics, but the body of faithful, loving breth- 
ren. Such was the fruit of this conflict with Gnostic 
errors. And while it centred in the truth of the 
Incarnation, and no systematic inquiry into the prob- 
lems of man, free will, moral evil and redemption is 
found in the Greek Church, there was developed in 
these Fathers much noble thought in this direction. 
Nothing in any Christian age is truer than the claim 
of Origen and Clement for the moral freedom of man, 
the harmony of evil with the divine goodness, the ethi= 



46 Epochs in Church History. 

cal view of the atonement and of Christian, activity 
in the whole work of grace. There is not a trace of 
the theory of decrees, or the rigid sacramental system 
of the Latin school begun by Augustin. Indeed, I 
may say, that most of the ethical ideas which are 
thought characteristic of our theology since both Aug- 
ustin and Calvin may be found in germ in these earli- 
est Fathers. 

If you have followed this brief analysis of the aim 
of the early Greek Christian theology, it will give you, 
I think, the line of connection with the whole later 
development. The central truth of the Incarnation, 
as it was thus made clear in its difference to heathen 
and to Gnostic systems, was seen to be at once the 
ground of science and faith. It must pass from these 
preparatory contests into stricter definition within the 
Church itself. All these varied tendencies of opinion 
had by degrees narrowed into two new defined lines of 
thought. There was, on the one hand, the disposition 
to dwell on the humanity of the Christ, on his subor- 
dination to the divine Being, which appeared in all 
shades of doctrine from what is vaguely called Ebion- 
itism to the ideas of emanation or generation, such as 
we have seen already in Origen. There was, on the 
other, the strict view of the divine unity, tending to 
merge the personality of the Word into a modus or 
attribute of the Godhead. Sabellianism was the most 
philosophic type of this school of thought. The rec- 



The Nicene Age. 47 

onciliation of the two was necessary to the mind of 
the Church. It was no merely speculative inquiry, it 
came from the nature of such a truth. Yet we must 
not so forget the character of this formative age as to 
apply to these opposite thinkers the sharp tests of 
later orthodoxy. Heresy was not a defined fact until 
the Nicene symbol, in regard to such variations as those 
of Sabellius. 

Their contests were rather, in the striking phrase of 
Athanasius, an " athletic ; " as it has been in the broader 
day of the English Church, when the semi-Arianism of 
Clarke and the Tritheism of Sherlock were the watch- 
words of much theological sharp-shooting, but did not 
exclude either from the communion of the body. But 
the position of Arius at last brought the opposing ideas 
into clear definition. We are indeed forced to do poor 
justice to him, as to all the great leaders of the opposi- 
tion in that day, from the fact that so little remains of 
their writings save in the report of orthodox fathers ; and 
we know too much of the unfairness and cruelty of that 
time to have firm faith in them. Arius, as we gather 
from the fragments of his great antagonist, was a theo- 
logian of keen intellect, and undoubtedly a sincere be- 
liever in the divine nature of Christ, as well as a man 
of pure, even ascetic life. Yet the theological hate of 
the Church sought to blacken his name as not only an 
unlearned pretender, but as stained with sins. It was, 
however, the belief of this thinker, that while the 



48 Epochs in Church History. 

Christ was divine, above all angelic powers, the unity 
of God demanded that the Word should be a uri(j}j,a, a 
created being, the first born, of kindred nature, but not 
of the one unshared Essence. That idea was by the 
logic of Athanasius the denial of the true divinity of 
Christ. It made him of necessity a SevtepoS Qeos, a 
demiurge, and thus turned the Christian doctrine into 
only another polytheism. Undoubtedly the argument 
of Athanasius was true. There was and is no middle 
ground in theology between the acceptance of the 
essential divinity of Christ, and that of his pure human- 
ity. The faith in the God-Man could only be in har- 
mony with the unity of God by the faith in the eternal, 
uncreated, ever-living Logos. Theology declared in 
scientific form what lay in the original faith. 



THE LATIN AGE. 

The Latin Church has been the riddle of Christian 
history. An empire older than the most age-worn 
monarchy of Europe, yet supreme over half the con- 
tinent ; the mother of the noblest divines, saints, con- 
fessors, yet of the vilest who have disgraced humanity; 
the cradle of art and letters, the champion of popular 
freedom for ages, yet now the sworn enemy of all prog- 
ress ; seemingly in the last stage of decline, yet 
always with fresh life in its veins ; an exile, yet always 
returning in triumph from Avignon or Gaeta ; under- 
mined in its very citadel, yet making a greater Rome 
in America ; with one Head, yet for seventy years 
wearing two hostile ones, and at times three, like the 
God Siva, on the same neck ; Catholic, yet with some 
features freer and more flexible than any Protestant 
sect ; spiritual in theory, yet the most secular of states, 
capable of intrigues that perplex cabinets and keep the 
world in war ; changing in its policy, yet unchanged in 
its dogmas, its arrogance, its majestic tyranny ; such 
a power is not easily understood. It is a problem for 
the statesman as much as for the divine. And it has 
not been until these calmer years of criticism that we 
3 49 



5<D Epochs in Church History. 

have fairly begun to solve it. Not only so, we have 
too often forgotten that its vices are only colossal ex- 
amples of what we find in Protestantism, itself. Our 
Anglicans have been the sworn haters of the Papacy, 
while all the while they have held notions of priestly 
power and sacraments which are only the unhatched 
roc's egg of the system. There is a treatise of 
Whately, perhaps the keenest of his pen, on " The 
Errors of Rome as rooted in human nature." That is the 
key which unlocks the wards of the history. Nothing 
is more natural than that the bitter remembrance of 
crimes and persecutions should have led to hatred of 
Rome. But unhappily it has too often blinded our 
clear judgment of that past era. We have lost sight of 
the secret of its power. We have not weighed the 
causes and the contradictions of its system. In that 
view I wish to study it. I shall not indulge in any 
Scripture imagery of the scarlet woman, or the ten- 
horned beast ; I shall trace its growth and connection 
with the history of European civilization. I shall not 
attempt to crowd the record of more than ten centuries 
into a lecture, but only to decide the question before 
us, its place in Christian history ; its claim of Catholic 
unity and supremacy. 

I might sum it in the parable of Christ : " When the 
blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then 
appeared the tares also." We are never to look on 
this strange structure of a Latin system as if it shot 



The Latin Age. 51 

up like the Pandemonium of Milton, the Satanic crea- 
tion of one Church, one middle age; but we are to 
recognize in it a distinct growth in the conditions of 
its time ; a growth of many diverse features, good and 
evil. There are, in this view, two periods in its long 
career carefully to be examined. There is one when 
it rose to its natural authority as the centre and seat 
of Christianity. There is another when it became the 
usurper of the throne. 

It is, then, to fix your thoughts at once on the 
leading feature of this history, chiefly the growth of a 
great, universal state, that we are concerned. In my 
last lecture I showed you that the Nicene age. was 
almost entirely one of doctrinal formation. Its wor- 
ship and polity are important, but secondary. The 
theology of the Incarnation was its real fruit. It is 
otherwise with the Latin. The idea of a Catholic 
structure lay in its genius as well as in the Providential 
conditions of the time. And it was irr singular har- 
mony with this, that the peculiar features which 
marked the old imperial Rome passed into the new, 
by the same law of heredity. Greece made^ philo- 
sophic systems, but no lasting commonwealth. Rome 
borrowed all her letters and philosophy from that ideal 
soil ; but she built a universal empire. Greek Chris- 
tianity ripened a Nicene symbol ; Latin Christianity 
built a Catholic church. It is this feature which opens 
for us all its early development, down to the time 



52 Epochs in Church History. 

when the East and West were divided. We have no 
interest whatever in that myth of St. Peter's residence 
in Rome, which our learned divines still study with 
such painful zeal, as if the fate of the Church hung on 
it. All we know is that it was a very early church, 
planted before the visit of St. Paul : nor is it certain 
whether it was more marked by Jewish-Christian or 
by Pauline elements. There are signs of both. It 
was the natural wash of many streams of life. But 
for us the important point is, that it has a very slight 
part in the early intellectual movement of the Church. 
It had no scholars, no thinkers. We do not often 
enough remember this, when we think of Latin 
Christianity as in after years the parent of scholastic 
learning. It was from North Africa the theology 
came which has become identified with its thought. 
Augustin gave to the Latin Church his profound 
system, Jerome gave it the Vulgate, which, as has 
been truly said, made the Latin Church more catholic 
than any other feature. But its power lay from the 
first in its administrative genius. The position was a 
commanding one. The halo of the old metropolis, 
" first of cities, the home of gods, golden Rome," 
hung on it ; and, colony though it was, it swiftly grew 
to a first rank beside the elder Patriarchates. Already 
in Tertullian we read the specific eulogy of the vener- 
able church. Its Bishops had the eye of generals. 
They had no genius for speculation, but kept a stolid 



The Latin Age. 53 

orthodoxy, above the battles of Eastern theologians ; 
and by sure degrees all looked on them as arbiters, 
who held the balance. The power thus grew by steady 
strides. It was the prophecy of that legatine right 
afterward to be claimed over the world, when the 
presbyters of the Roman Papa were allowed to sit in 
council with Eastern Bishops. Imperceptibly he came 
to be recognized as a monarch, who only spoke from 
his throne to his inferiors. Then came the great dis- 
memberment of the empire. The Eastern Church 
declined with the Byzantine power. But the Latin re- 
mained conqueror. From the moment Italy was left 
in the weak hand of Honorius, only to become a petty 
exarchate of Ravenna, the Bishop of Rome was the 
true emperor. He alone represented the power which 
could control the social world. It is from this point 
the history of the Latin Church becomes memorable. 
It passes through two epochs. The first is the struggle 
with the barbaric hordes, Goth, Lombard, to the new 
empire of Charlemagne. The second is the feudal era. 
In each it is the leader of civilization, and wins the 
homage of the world. Such is the point of view from 
which we can impartially explain the rise and the per- 
version of the Latin Church. If we read it with the 
eyes of Newman as a development of a great ecclesi- 
astical institution, lodged in a supremacy of Peter, it 
is indeed a development of all the traditions and all 
the vices of human nature in a priestly state. If we 



54 Epochs in Church History. 

read it with the eyes of many Protestants, as one co- 
lossal fraud, we are not only unjust to its history, but 
to all history of growth. 

I turn, first, to the formation of its doctrinal system : 
and I ask you to observe at each step what I have 
said of its original character. It was the theology of 
the great Augustin, which passed into the whole cult- 
ure of the Latin Church ; and it is important to know 
its character, that we may understand how it gave 
birth to the after system. Nothing can show the 
power of this master thinker so truly as the fact that 
he not only was the teacher of that church, but that 
Protestantism, while it renounced the sacramental 
notions which had sprung out of his view, still clung 
to the theory of election. The problem of Augustin 
was the nature of man and redemption. He saw with 
deep insight the relation of Christianity to the moral 
condition of the race : and his view of sin as a race- 
evil, an inheritance ; of Christ as the Life of humanity, 
are the expansion of St. Paul. But he had drawn 
from Plato his doctrine of ideas, of man as one being 
in all individual existences ; and this he applied to 
Christian reasoning. Human nature was organically 
as in Adam, and partakes of his depravity. It was 
recreated in Christ, and incorporate with His Body. 
It was grace, then, the foreordaining will, which saved 
man's spirit and restored the original righteousness, 
without any act of his natural power. That grace was 



The Latin Age. . 55 

given through the supernatural channels of the Church ; 
it was begun by regeneration through baptism, and 
continued by participation in this organic unity of the 
body. Such was the mingled truth and error of the 
system. It was profound in its grasp of the great moral 
unity of men. But it led on one side to an extrava- 
gant view of divine decrees. It led, again, to the no- 
tion of the sacraments as necessary sources of divine 
life ; and this had its peculiar outcome in the Latin 
Communion. Yet it is not till centuries afterward 
that we see it appear in the scholastic system. It is 
in its general influence I aim to trace it, as its mingled 
truth and error passed into the early education. The 
Church had in it all the faith, the learning, the morality 
of its time. But it had in it also the admixture of five 
centuries ; many superstitions, which Ave have seen 
grow in the Eastern communion ; it had, besides, the 
tendency, inherent in its character, to the formation 
of a strong hierarchical organization. 

The one earliest fruit of its energy was its mission- 
ary work among the savages of the North. It is the 
noblest chapter of that history. Although in after 
years the ancient churches were made vassals of 
Roman power, yet it is at the first the record of a zeal, 
a self-sacrifice, which defied all dangers. In three hun- 
dred years Christianity had pierced from Gaul to the 
forests of Germany ; had subdued Goth, Vandal and 
Visigoth, in Spain, and in Africa. From 597 to 735 — 



56 Epochs in Church History. 

Augustin to Bede — all the scattered kingdoms of Eng- 
land had become converts ; the old Paganism was 
gone, and a new world of life had sprung up. Ulphi- 
las gave his Mseso-Goths the Scriptures, the germ of 
education. Columba and Boniface established their 
missions amidst the tribes beyond the Rhine. Ro- 
mance has nothing more marvellous than their history. 
Wherever they went, there followed civilization. All 
Europe became a network of dioceses, each of which 
acknowledged the mother of them all, the one West- 
ern Patriarchate. It is from this beginning we see 
arise the intellectual life. With Alfred springs the 
first of the Universities, which to-day are the pride of 
England. With Charlemagne, that brilliant age of 
France, which survives the convulsions of feudalism ; 
and out of it came in ripe time scholars like Lanfranc 
and Anselm. A new literature is created by the in- 
fusion of this fresh Teutonic thought. Modern letters 
and arts are born from this cradle. It is so we are to 
estimate the best influence of the Church. W T hat in- 
justice for us to charge on it the motley superstitions 
of such a time, and forget that it only partook them in 
common with all ! What absurdity to speak as if the 
Christian clergy had done nothing through ages for 
science, when almost all the treasures of Greek 
thought had been destroyed by barbaric hands, and 
in the schools of learning the possession of a copy of 
Virgil or of Strabo was the rarest of relics ! There 



The Latin Age. 57 

could be no science in our sense of the word. It was 
by the most legitimate causes that the power of the 
Latin hierarchy grew. It was impossible that it 
should not gain an almost supernatural influence in a 
time when the nobleman could not read, and all art 
and letters dwelt in the cloister. We may smile at its 
narrow range of learning. In that day, when the the- 
ology of Augustin, the meagre science gathered from 
Boethius, the logic and rhetoric taken from an imper- 
fect translation of Aristotle constituted all scholarship, 
it was an infallible teacher. The Bible was in its 
hands, because none else could read it. It was out of 
these sources that there sprang the first products of 
European genius. The marvellous creations of Gothic 
art were inspired by them. It was the religion of that 
day, narrow, yet lofty and devout, which reared the 
nave with its colossal cross, rising arch on arch, from 
lancet window and flowered stem-like columns to 
vaulting roof; and which toiled age on age till the spire 
pointed as a visible finger to the invisible. Painting 
grew from the illuminated missal, and the early poetry 
from the monkish rhyme. To them we owe the history 
of this time; the drama, as well as the books of devo- 
tion. And thus we may fairly judge the institutions 
of that age. Take the greatest, the monastic. orders. 
They were the outgrowth of a piety which belonged 
to such social chaos. The cloister was the only retreat 
for one who would not be a rude soldier, and there 



58 Epochs in Church History. 

was a more civilized type in the common life of those 
brotherhoods than in the savage Greek anchorite. As 
we read in Montalembert the early history of Bene- 
dict, who, A.D. 480, became the great organizer of the 
Latin orders; of that wild, charming retreat of Subri- 
aco, and Monte Cassino, where the enthusiastic monk 
gathered his followers for labor, for study, for inspir- 
ing toil, we cannot but see the fairest picture of that 
stormy time. That life was not an idle or sensual one 
as afterward. The Benedictines have left us grand 
folios of learning. Anselm and Bede, Bernard and 
^VThomas, and Roger Bacon, theologians, men of 
iscience, painters, missionaries, were bred in the clois- 
ter. 

And thus, further, as we pass to the worship of that 
Latin Church in this long interval, we have the same 
characteristics. There are seen the ripening seeds of 
superstition. We find from the fifth century onward 
the strange medley of piety and mythology. The sac- 
raments were magic rites ; the Host a supernatural mar- 
vel ; relic and pilgrimage, the myths of patron saints, 
and of purgatory all grew in the rank soil. But the 
religion was in all these features the copy of the times. 
It belonged to an age when even a Roger Bacon 
believed in the transmutation of base metal to gold ; 
when Mandeville thought Jerusalem the centre of the 
earth ; when Godfrey consulted the stars to know the 
fate of a battle. It is not, therefore, to be said that it 



The Latin Age. 59 

was a religion without intellectual or spiritual life. 
There were the sweetest virtues of the household, 
tenderness, rapt devotion, charity ; yet there were 
intolerance, social pride, fierceness, childish supersti- 
tion. No age was capable of stranger contrasts : it 
could produce a St. Louis and a Simon de Montfort. 
Peter Damian was the gentlest of divines, yet he be- 
lieved in the persecution of the Jews. St. Bernard 
shrank from the profligate court to his retreat in 
Ciairvaux, yet he preached to the Crusaders that to 
slay a Mussulman was to purchase heaven. St. Louis 
drank the wine from the altar to neutralize a draught 
of poison ; yet he was an accomplished, devout king 
and father of his people. Gregory the Great ransomed 
slaves in the market, yet he held a married clergyman 
as the vilest of sinners. The Church was superstitious, 
but it was the moral power of the world. It alone 
gave the serf the opportunity to win a place above the 
noble. It made the mailed baron reverence a might 
above brute force. It opened the only refuge for 
defenceless women. It established, in what our Saxon 
forefathers called the time of unlaw, a social order; and 
while we laugh at the modern dreamers Avho would 
renew those " ages of faith," we recognize in it the 
teacher of the world. 

And so, last of all, we can understand the crowning 
feature of the fabric : the Papacy. It was, of course, 
a growth mingled with ambition. It was the neces- 



60 Epochs in Church History. 

sary result of the whole development of a priestly 
state. But we are never to forget that it came also 
from the conditions of such a world, and that it re- 
mained while those chaotic years lasted, the pillar of 
social as well as religious strength. The Roman 
Bishop, after the invasion of Alaric, alone represented 
the learning and law of the past ; and in him the rude 
barbarian saw the presence of the only power to which 
he could yield. Nor was it only worldly craft that led 
him to his alliance with Clovis ; it was the forecast of the 
statesman, which saw the future of a new civilization. 
And when the empire of Charlemagne fell, the Pontiff 
held up the tottering fragments of the feudal time. 
We see all Europe sink as in some prehistoric period, 
and at last out of the waste bed appear new states. 
, It was the Papacy, which in this time of disintegration 
kept one religion, one language, one law. The feudal 
form, which the Church then assumed, was natural. 
Abbey and Cathedral held their property by the same 
tenure as the noble. There were mailed Bishops, and 
the spiritual Lord was " Comes et magister militus." 
The quarrelsome barons would obey only this one 
divine Suzerain. It was he, who, amidst the crushing 
wars, could ordain a Truce of God, and compel for 
awhile the wrath of men to yield to the voice of God. 
I do not wonder that the half civilized continent saw 
in Rome, that city of God, of which Augustin wrote in 
his great work, the one metropolis of faith and law. 



The Latin Age. 61 

Only as we thus know the character of that imperfect 
civilization ; as w r e see the good wrought by the Latin 
Church; as we fairly weigh its vices in the scale of the 
age, can we read history aright. 

And now we turn to the period of its decline, and 
study its causes. We see this majestic church, after 
the work of education is done, changed to the despot 
of Europe. When and whence was such a change? 
It is impossible to say ; it is of great moment to ob- 
serve that we cannot fix the date of its corruption ; 
we may say in general about the tenth century. But 
our interest is not in the precise date, it is in the proc- 
ess. None could see the tares until the blade sprang 
up. And here, then, is the true point of view. It was 
when it had passed the period needed for the educa- 
tion of Europe that the falsehood of its system be- 
came manifest. It had been supreme, because a feudal 
age made it such ; it now claimed to be the divine, per- 
petual sovereign. Its foundation principle was that of 
a hierarchy. It is not a communion of the body of 
believers, which keeps the truth and order of Christ, 
yet recognizes the right of the personal conscience, and 
is thus consistent with the laws of all social growth, 
but it is an ecclesiastical state, centred by divine 
command in the see of Peter, and intrusted to the 
charge of a supernatural caste of clergy, as sole dis- 
pensers of truth and grace. This notion of the Church 
was not of Roman origin. It had its roots in the 



62 Epochs in Church History. 

Greek Church, as we have seen. It had its roots in 
human nature. But it was this Latin Church, by its 
social conditions, which developed it in such colossal 
form. And as we thus trace it, we shall see the steps 
of this development. We see it in the result of its doc- 
trinal system. The faith of the Church is woven into 
a subtle web of logical reasoning; and every idea of sin 
and grace, of regeneration and sanctification, which had 
come down from Augustin, is adapted by the schools. 
Now arose the sacramental system of the Church. In 
its visible communion alone salvation could be found; 
in this the infant was purged from original sin by the 
grace of baptism, and fed by the eucharist. Next 
comes the order of the seven sacraments : each period 
of the Christian life was a step in the round of sacra- 
mental observance ; penance washed the sin after bap- 
tism, marriage was solely a priestly act, holy orders 
sealed the entrance to the religious vocation, and unc- 
tion dismissed the dying soul in peace. But, above all, 
the dogma of transubstantiation has been its comple- 
tion. It is only indeed the crowning scholastic sub- 
tlety of that time ; it was merely in accordance with 
the metaphysical notion of universals that it was de- 
clared that the bread and wine were accidents, the 
body and blood of Christ substance. Berengarius op- 
posed it. But the Latin Church was right. It was the 
logical result of its theory of the sacraments, as it is 
now with the theory of eucharistic adoration. The 



The Latin Age. 63 

simple communion of the Lord had become to the 
credulous believer a miracle ; the priest was a me- 
diator at the altar. And from this point it is we see 
more and more the separation of the doctrine of the 
Church from the life of religion. I do not speak in any- 
shallow vein of the scholastic age : in an intellectual 
view no age is more brilliant in pure thought than 
that of the great doctors of the Latin communion. 
The Summa of Aquinas, the " angelic " doctor, is to 
this day the treasure house of speculative learning. 

But the truth I wish to impress on you is this, that 
this very age was the ripening of the seeds of its in- 
tellectual and moral decay. The Church had changed 
its truth into Aristotelian metaphysics. Abelard, in 
1079, began the battle which appealed to reason 
against dogma. He was followed by a succession of 
keen thinkers, who rent the tradition in pieces. The 
result was, that the speculative and literary element 
became a decomposing one, and ripened into the 
most pronounced materialism in the later years. The 
Church could not reconcile science and faith. Its re- 
ligious minds more and more turned to a mystic piety, 
like Bonaventura or the saintly A Kempis. It became a 
church of mere tradition. The new literary life, which 
began to bloom in Europe, grew to be its enemy. It 
smothered the growth of thought. It had educated its 
children, it sought to keep them always children. 
But it is the same decay we note, when we see the 



64 Epochs in Church History. 

divorce between the Church and the social life. The 
priesthood hitherto, amidst all corruptions, had been 
as an order wiser and purer than the laity. It reached 
the point where it became only a triumphant hier- 
archy. Each step is visible ; not till the tenth century 
was the vow of celibacy enforced, and the order 
changed to a caste severed from all social ties. It 
was resisted boldly by the German clergy, but in vain. 
Then came the enforced practice of confession. It 
made an army of sacred spies, who intruded into the 
secrets of all, from prince to peasant. One by one the 
monastic orders had grown debased ; the mendicant 
friars swarmed over Europe. They displaced the old 
and healthier relation of parochial clergy, and it was 
at last only a mob of ecclesiastics, who obeyed the 
word of the Pontiff. Learning had fled from the con- 
vent, it was the nest of vices. 

And so, last of all, the Papacy reached its undis- 
guised claim. It was the keystone in this perfect 
Roman arch of the hierarchy. Each stone was ce- 
mented, one on the other, and we can see the mason- 
ry. The first was when, A.D. 607, Boniface declared 
himself Universal Bishop. The next, A.D. 752, when 
the Pope became king-maker in the election of Pepin. 
The third, A.D. 840-50, when the Decretals gave the 
sanction to that universal claim. The fourth, when, 
A.D. 1030, the Pope secured the choice by authorizing 
his election only by the higher clergy. Hitherto the 



The Latin Age. 65 

Emperor had a right of choice ; the lower clergy, also, 
and even the city and the soldiery, had made their 
Papa. The system was now complete. Ultramon- 
tanism was born, like Richard, with its full set of 
teeth. But its inherent falsehood was not visible 
while the feudal age lasted. Dr. Dollinger can show 
us to-day the myth of the Decretals, but none disput- 
ed them then. It was only when, A.D. ic^JHildebrand 
boldly assumed this full-grown power in his great 
struggle with the empire, that the world began to see 
what the Papacy meant. His two decrees revealed it. 
One, the assumption of all investitures in himself, gave 
him supreme power over the national liberties ; the 
other, his enforcement of celibacy, made the clergy a 
Pontifical army. From that point the Papacy became 
the despot of Europe. Innocent III. said, " I am 
Vicar of God." Gregory IX. called the Pope " Lord 
of the world." And from that point began the strife. 
It was still long before it could be ended. We read 
with wonder to-day of Henry IV., the haughty 
emperor, after years of battle, bowing before that 
mysterious interdict, which fell like a pestilence over 
Germany, waiting in the cold winter to kneel at last a 
slave at the feet of the stern Pontiff. But the blow 
roused Europe. The sacred right of national freedom 
awoke. It was now a mortal struggle between the 
Holy Roman Church and the Holy Roman Empire : 
that social principle, as Bryce has so thoroughly traced 



66 Epochs in Church History. 

it, which had slumbered since the day of Charlemagne, 
but never died ; that recognition of the divine law in 
social^order, which Dante so boldly saw and uttered in 
his De Monarchia, the conflict of Guelph and Ghib- 
elline, that was to last till the Reformation. It was 
renewed by Frederic II. and the IXth Gregory, in 
1228. It has another phase with Philip the Fair of 
France. It ends in the fact that the Papacy becomes 
the vassal of the monarchies. The fourteenth century 
sees the Pontiff at Avignon ; and when the " seventy 
years of captivity" are done he returns to Rome, to 
be henceforth only the Italian King. Pope and Anti- 
pope wrestle in the arena, and Europe enters on its 
career of freer national development. The Papacy 
survived, but its empire was really gone. 

We gather here the whole history. I do not antic- 
ipate the results of the Reformation. I only show 
the causes of its decline in its own natural develop- 
ment. Rome bore the Reformation from its own 
womb. It had changed Christianity into a priestly 
tyranny over reason and conscience. It had become 
the foe of progress. It had debased social morals. 
It had usurped the rights of civil and national order. 
It was not only a dead, but a decomposed body, 
and, like the bloated corpse of the Norman Conqueror, 
it burst when forced into its coffin, and filled the air 
with its foul gases. Nothing could be more deplor- 
able than the state of civilized Europe for these two 



The Latin Age. 67 

hundred years before the Reformation. There was 
no reform within itself. For centuries it had been 
attempted : scholars, divines, even good Pontiffs had 
protested against the growing vices, yet in vain. 
Arnold of Brescia and Savonarola had died in the 
breach. Council on Council had ended in nothing. 
It was on the feast of All Saints, A.D. 1414, in the quiet 
town of Constance, that one of the last, and in every 
feature the most memorable of the great assemblies, 
gathered. It came to judge one of the vilest of the 
Popes ; a murderer, an adulterer, a robber, whose 
crimes had filled the Church with horror. To that 
august conclave flocked Sigismund, the dignitaries of 
Germany and France, Gerson, the learned and devout 
scholar, D'Ailly, the brave spokesman of French 
liberties, nobles and divines. The assembly opened 
with a solemn mass ; weeks passed in angry conflict, 
until at length the Pope was deposed, and from the 
lips of Gerson there was proclaimed the sacred right 
of the whole Church in Council to judge the Vicar of 
God. 

Yet though it seemed the herald of reform, it 
passed away without one substantial change. It is the 
fearful commentary on the Latin Church, that while 
the foul Pontiff was exiled, John Huss, the pure 
apostle, betrayed by his own monarch, was led forth 
by the voice of the whole Council, with the assent of 
Gerson himself, to burn at the stake. In that funeral 



68 Epochs in Church History. 

pyre was lighted the flame which was never to go out 
till Christian liberty should burn up the despotism of 
Rome with unquenchable fire. 

And here, then, we solve the whole problem of 
Latin Christianity in past and present. History solves 
it. It is the most momentous question of our times ; 
and it needs a clear understanding. We have our 
theorists to-day, alike of the modern Romish and of 
the Anglican school, who mislead us with their views 
of Catholic unity, and our Protestants, who read with 
one-sided eyes the lesson of the past. But if I have 
at all fulfilled my purpose, you will grasp the historic 
principle. There is one central, pervading falsehood, 
on which the whole foundation of Roman despotism 
rests. It is the idea of a priestly supremacy over the 
Christian conscience, which assumes the place of Christ 
the Head, and builds up its theocracy of dogma and 
authority as the one Church of God. It is that unity 
which for ten centuries lasted in Europe, because it 
was only through its long and rich experience it could 
gain the education it needed in religious and social 
order. But that unity was in its very nature only a 
step toward the larger growth. Within the bosom 
of Christian society and Church there were struggling 
two forces, one of a living, divine order, the other of 
a human despotism. It is thus we can do full justice 
to the past. It is folly to forget that amidst the 
darkest ages of superstition there has been always the 



The Latin Age, 69 

true Church of Christ. We claim our unity with all 
that is true in its theology and institutions ; we can 
never surrender the wisdom of an Augustin or an 
Anselm, the holiness of a Bonaventura or an A Kempis : 
never deny the power of a religion which could create 
so many sages and saints of the past, or thousands 
even like a Fenelon or Pascal, who lived and died in its 
communion. Nay, more, it is essential to our Protest- 
antism to claim as a historic fact that the Reforma- 
tion did not hurt the unity of the Church, but only its 
usurpation; that its true unity was only gained when the 
frozen winter of Latin Christendom was loosened, and 
the living streams of learning, of social freedom, of pure 
faith broke forth in the new spring tide of Europe. 
This is the true catholicity of history. 

But we are to separate its form from that false 
catholicity which in any form would identify the 
truth, or order, or unity of the Christian Church with 
the system of the Roman communion. We are to 
recognize the essential falsehood of the whole principle 
of a hierarchy on which it is built. It is no part of 
my design to dwell on the late history of the Church. 
It is from first to last the illustration of one undis- 
guised, logical principle. Up to the Reformation, 
there was a Catholic Church, however corrupt ; since 
then it is only the Roman Obedience. It is simply a 
sect, great, magnificent in resources, in craft, with all 
the prestige of its antique traditions, all the semblance 



yo Epochs in Church History. 

of primitive teaching, of authority, but a sect. The 
Council of Trent settled its creed and policy. The 
organization of Loypjta made it a serried phalanx. 
That counter Reformatio^, which Ranke has so pro- 
foundly sketched, gave it for a while a seeming purity, 
a new life to recover its lost possessions. But it only 
welded it into a compact despotism. A century 
passed in battle. No chapter of the past is so full of 
horrors as that of its holy wars, its inquisitions. No 
power has ever wielded such fatal blows as the Society 
of Loyola. It has been cast out of kingdoms, but it 
has always returned in triumph. Not a single claim 
of its despotism has been relaxed. Not a feature of 
its fixed policy has been surrendered. It has had two 
splendid triumphs since the first years of the Reforma- 
tion. The close of the French Revolution left the 
world in a wreck; throne and altar had gone down: 
and in despair the weary world rushed back into the 
arms of the church, whose corruptions had more than 
all else begotten the atheism and the social ruin. 
That reaction was the death of even the last of old 
Gallican liberties : men dared no longer whisper of 
Bossuet or Dupin. Ultramontanism absorbed France, 
extinguished the hopes of the continent, and kept 
Italy in chains till a few years ago. Its second 
triumph has been in the zeal which has colonized the 
new world. Nothing can so show its adaptiveness to 
every policy. It can maintain absolutism in Europe, 



The Latin Age. yi 

it can talk democracy here. But whatever its mask, 
it is always the same, always true to one aim, the 
cause of that Papal supremacy which it calls the 
Church of God. We talk of the new and astounding 
dogma of Infallibility. But it was the just claim of the 
Council which passed it, that it was no more than the 
Roman Church had held before. Undoubtedly it was 
not pronounced before in council, undoubtedly great 
divines had always questioned it ; but the idea, as Mr. 
Newman proved, the idea of a supreme, living arbiter 
of Christian doctrine is only the logical outcome of the 
system. The aged man who sits in the Papal chair 
to-day did not create it. He only spoke aloud the 
dogma which Aquinas promulgated long ago, and 
which means simply this, that Ultramontanism is for- 
ever the foe of all Christian freedom of thought, all 
advance in Christian knowledge. 

And thus we stand on the threshold of our time, 
and see the meaning of the problem for us. We 
should weigh it well : for it invokes issues some dream 
not of. It is to many minds a source of vague terror, 
to many a miracle of power, which calls forth a reluc- 
tant admiration. It seems to stand, after all the 
battles of these centuries, as impregnable as ever: it 
covers this new world with churches, it plots new 
leagues in Europe ; and while it has lost Italy, and its 
power is crippled in Austria, Spain, France, it dares 
fight against the strength of Germany. It could compel 



*]2 Epochs in Church History. 

obedience even in the face of an Old Catholic seces- 
sion ; it draws its converts from Protestant England, 
and dreams of the triumph of Ultramontanism. But 
surely, if we soberly read its history, we need not be 
disturbed by such facts. It is not strange that such 
a power still survives. It lives, first of all, by its hold 
on the religious faith and habit of a large part of 
Christendom. We are never to forget that the Prot- 
estant Reformation was confined almost wholly to 
those German or Saxon lands where there had been 
a freer revival of science and letters, and a national 
life never so fettered by Papal despotism. Nor is it 
strange that the old attachment to the Church of the 
past, the memoirs of the noblest age of scholars and 
saints, the Church entwined with all the faith and 
habit of the people, should remain. The Old Catholic 
movement is the best commentary on this fact. We 
cannot look save with love and reverence on men like 
Dollinger and Hyacinthe, who could not, till the last, 
give up their ancient religion, but dreamed of a re- 
formed Papacy ; and we must be content that this 
movement shall work itself out in such sober ways as 
may bring reform without destruction. It may yet 
be long before Rome shall lose this power, which it has 
by its antiquity, its seeming unity. It lives, as the 
mistletoe that keeps its own green bloom by the sap 
it draws from the trunk, but strangles the gigantic 
oak at last. But, again, it has its life by the influence 



The Latin Age. 73 

it exerts, beyond its own communion, over the mind 
of many in a time of religious quarrel and unbelief. 
It seems to rise before the eyes of doubting, weary 
men as the one only representative of the unbroken 
Church. Every age since the Reformation has seen 
these examples of conversion from Protestant ranks. 
We have seen it in our own day in noble minds 
like Newman, seduced by the dream of catholic- 
ity, and dismayed by the growth of religious free- 
dom. It can blind the scholar by its pretended his- 
toric claims, and dazzle the imaginative by the charm 
of its ritual. There is a compact strength in its organ- 
ization which makes it far more effective than our 
free Protestantism. It has the drill of an ecclesiasti- 
cal army. It has the might of an unscrupulous logic. 
An Anglo-Catholic is always hampered by Protestant 
difficulties. Rome has none. It proclaims the infal- 
libility of one head ; it allows no freedom of opinion ; 
it utters its historic falsehoods with the voice of the 
oecumenical council ; it knows no code of faith or 
morals save implicit obedience. There is in all this a 
power which overawes the world. Mr. Newman tells 
us in his Apologia, that in his unenlightened evangeli- 
cal youth he fell into the habit, he knew not how, 
when he went into the dark, of making the sign of the 
cross. It was a pre-Catholic instinct. And his pas- 
sage into Romanism was just this. It was his magic 
charm in his intellectual dark, and it is the apologia 
4 



74 Epochs in Church History. 

of almost all who have followed him. Romanism was 
not a faith, but an escape from thought. And we 
need not therefore imagine that it is very soon to be 
extinguished. It may be long before it loses its hold 
on the half instructed intelligence, the imaginative 
and the credulous worship of the world. 

But it is in this view we are to learn the true lesson 
of history. We are not to fear for the unity of the 
Church of God ; we must resist the discords and the 
loose unbelief; we must maintain the symbols of our 
faith, and the historic order of the Church. But we 
are never to forget that the unity which was de- 
stroyed in that Latin Church, was one that cannot 
return. The Church cannot have again the catholicity 
of a hierarchy. I have quoted Whately's words, that 
Romanism is the development of the error of our hu- 
man nature. It is this we are to learn to-day. It is the 
fallacy that cleaves to many in our own communion, 
who will oppose Rome by making the Church another 
copy of it. We reject a Papacy, but we are always dream- 
ing of some form of visible unity, which can only be 
gained by the renunciation of the essential principles 
of Protestant freedom. I know no stranger book than 
the Eirenicon of Pusey, in which, after proving with 
the wealth of learning that modern Rome has substi- 
tuted Mariolatry for Christian worship, he proposes an 
alliance with it on the basis of Trent ; as if the Mari- 
olatry he exposes were not the very development of 



The Latin Age. 75 

Trent. It is this blind adherence to an untrue notion 
of Catholicity, this reading history backward as we do 
our Hebrew Bibles, which has ended in the reaction 
we mourn to-day : this that leads us to mourn over 
the Reformation, to look with fear on science or free- 
dom ; to coquet with Latin priests, and mimic Roman 
ritual. That dream has led and will lead again into 
the Roman sepulchre; and it matters little whether we 
go thither, or stay at home in an Anglo-Catholic tra- 
dition. It matters not whether we have an infallible 
Pope, or an infallible Episcopate, a mass or a Eucha- 
ristic sacrifice, a Roman ritual or as absurd a copy. 
We want the unity which consists with an open 
Bible, a sound intelligence, a better learning, a rea- 
sonable faith. Our fathers bought it in the fires of 
Smithfield, and baptized it in the baptism of their 
blood ; and we will keep it forever. The strength of 
the Church lies in this, that it works with the forces of 
a Christian civilization. That is our principle. It is 
there we shall fight out the battle. It may be a long 
one, and it may be a harder one than we imagine. It 
may be another holy war like those that redeemed 
Holland ; if so, in the name of the God of battles, let 
it come. It maybe, and I trust will be, a nobler battle 
than that with an Alva, the battle of learning, of 
science and social action. I believe it the greatest 
battle-field for the first principles of religious and social 
freedom. I do not dread it, I welcome it ; for I know 



y6 Epochs in Church History. 

that neither the life of man, under God's guidance, 
nor the march of history, nor the Church of Christ 
goes backward. And I can trust in Him, to whom, in 
the words of Bossuet, "the ages of man are moments 
on the disk of His eternity." 



THE REFORMATION. 

It is now three centuries and a half since the brave 
monk of Wittenberg nailed his Theses at the door of 
the church : a new world of faith, of social purity, of 
Christian civilization has followed it. Yet we are still 
really in the mid-process of the movement. As in 
one of the grand formative epochs of our globe, we 
see here and there a peak or a solid tract rise above 
the waste, yet it is still an earth " standing in the water 
and out of the water." We have too many strifes, too 
many unsettled questions of faith and church to judge 
with soberness the whole meaning of the Reformation. 
There are those who say that Protestantism is in its 
principle religious freedom without any positive Chris- 
tianity at all. This is the meeting ground of its Rom- 
ish haters and its unbelieving defenders. There are 
those who still identify its doctrine with their own 
special confessions, and find it in Calvin and Luther. 
And there are others, especially in our communion, 
who call it only a negative system, and doubt whether 
it has done any lasting good for the unity of the 
Church. I belong neither to its vilifiers nor its wor- 
shippers. I believe the only way to understand it is 

77 



78 Epochs in Church History. 

to read it in its connection with Christian history. In 
that light I see in it not merely a strife of doctrine, 
but a step in the whole growth of a Christian civiliza- 
tion ; the ripest fruit of the whole past, and a fact 
bound up with the whole future. I believe we can 
know its place and work in His Providence, Who 
guides from the beginning to the end. If I can give 
you such a view, I shall fulfil my design in this lect- 
ure. And I shall endeavor to trace in this history 
the character of the movement which created the 
Reformation ; the positive principles which lay at its 
foundation ; the causes, good and evil, which shaped 
its after growth ; and the manifold results, as they 
reach to our own and all future time. 

The only just historic view which explains the 
Reformation, is to regard it as the result of a long, 
inward, necessary preparation in the Church itself. 
There are few who would not laugh at the legend, so 
long maintained by Romish champions, that the faith 
of Christendom was overturned by the ambition of 
Luther, who hated the Dominicans, as the sole retail- 
ers of indulgences. I remember, on the outer wall of 
St. Stephen's, in Vienna, among the rudely carved 
sculptures, there stands a group, the Ecce Homo, in 
which the thorn-crowned Saviour appears, rejected by 
the Jewish crowd ; and at the corner, plainly seen in 
his flat cap and monk's robe, among Scribes and 
Pharisees, is Luther, turning away with lifted hand. 



The Reformation. 79 

That is the way in which the Latin Church has written 
history. Yet after all, it is not much worse than the style 
of some of our own critics. It is still the view (quite par- 
donable in an Erasmus, who could not see through the 
smoke of the battle) held by many of our Anglican di- 
vines, that this great awakening of Europe might have 
been, instead of a revolution, a change, wrought in a 
peaceful way within the bosom of the Church. It is to 
meet this baseless fallacy that I turn to the record. 
If we regard such a movement as in its real origin only 
the work of a Luther or a Calvin or a Cranmer, we mis- 
understand it utterly. We are to see in the crises of 
social and Christian history as in the metamorphic 
rocks or the terraces, where the floods have left their 
sea marks, the work of slow ages and internal fires. I 
have shown you already in the bosom of Latin Chris- 
tianity itself the steps of the decay in faith, worship, 
and social order. We are now to see the more posi- 
tive growth in it of the principles which ripened into 
the Protestant Reformation. And for this, we must 
go back to the century before, and note its steps. It is 
not chiefly in the revolt of its, philosophic minds 
against the scholastic dogmas ; it is not in the birth of 
a new classic literature with the Renaissance, not in 
the rising of the ideas of national and social liberty, 
that we find the source of its origin. All these have 
their influence. But when, with writers on civiliza- 
tion like Buckle, we reckon them, and forget the 



80 Epochs in Church History. 

deeper religious cause, we have read the surface only. 
Europe would have ended indeed only in a revolt 
against all Christianity, or in that new Paganism 
which we see in the Italy of Leo X., had it not been 
guided by a more earnest spirit. The change came 
from within. Although a Roman hierarchy had lost 
its hold on the faith of men, it had still its wise and 
holy men, who believed in the truth embalmed in it, 
and strove to restore it to its purity. Nor is it merely 
of those scattered sects, like the Waldenses, who had 
already separated from the Church, that I speak. We 
may well indeed remember their faith, their martyr- 
dom, their undoubted influence in the keeping of pure 
religion. But we must neither suppose that all Chris- 
tian light or life was shut within their little Goshen, 
nor that so vast a Reformation could have sprung 
from such isolated causes. We must look at the inner 
life of men, who in the quiet of their cell and the 
humble brotherhoods of the common lot, studied the 
Scriptures, and drank there their inspiration. The 
question of indulgences, the supreme power of a Papacy, 
the palpable strifes, which called forth a Luther, were 
not as yet agitated. There is not even any open rejec- 
tion of the dogmas of the Church. But the change 
appears in a deep, spiritual feeling, which more and more 
retreated from the scholastic hardness, and the mechani- 
cal worship of Rome, into a life of inward communion. 
We take as its earliest type, Thomas A Kempis, in the 



The Reformation. 81 

fourteenth century ; and although the question of his 
authorship may not be fixed, it is the more significant, 
for The Imitation of Christ ascribed to him is to be 
looked at not as the soliloquy of one man. It is "a 
voice crying in the wilderness." 1 grant, with Milman, 
that its title is a sad misnomer. Its ascetic tone shows 
too well how the Roman religion had changed the Im- 
itation of Christ into a solitary self-torment. Yet, 
what Christian heart has not felt its charm? Sen- 
tence on sentence is the denial of all dead religion. 
" Without the love of God and our neighbor no works 
are of avail ; empty vessels without oil." It is the 
first step in all such religious movement, as it was with 
a Spener afterward, that the dogmas are no longer the 
life. We are now to see that spiritual feeling passing 
into clearer consciousness. In the next generation w T e 
have a class of men who, while they too remained in 
outward union with the Church, had renounced 
Roman error. We place here Wyclif in England, 
Huss in Bohemia. But we are misled when we think 
of them as alone or few. Lollardism died, because it 
had other social elements which were visionary; and 
Huss was burned. But their ideas were already ripe, 
and it is one of the most significant facts that it was 
in Saxon and Teutonic Europe that this tendency 
arose. We can never understand the history of a 
Luther, until we have learned its preface in these, who 
have been well called by Ulmann the Reformers be- 
4* 



82 Epochs in Church History. 

fore the Reformation. John Wesel, in 1420, John of 
Goch, Tauler, whom Luther called his master, are the 
noblest in that noble army ; and above all, if you will 
know the spirit of the coming time, read the Theologia 
Germanica, that wonderful book, mystical, incomplete, 
yet the very marrow of living Christian truth. They did 
not battle in the great field of Europe, because the 
issue was not ripe ; but it is amazing to find that there 
is not a single truth which we are wont to think the 
after growth of Protestantism, which they had not 
uttered. The principle of justification by faith, the 
falsehood of a Roman sacerdotal system, the empti- 
ness of tradition, the supremacy of the Word of God, 
the usurpation of the Papacy, all were fully affirmed. 
Listen to the bold words of Wesel : " He who be- 
lieves himself justified by works knows not what 
righteousness is." " We acknowledge a Catholic 
Church, but we place its unity in the faith and the 
heavenly Head, not in Peter and his successors." 

These were the thinkers and teachers of the latter 
half of the fourteenth, and beginning of the fifteenth 
century. And now, if we turn to the other combined 
influences which went to the result, we may rightly 
understand them. It is the demand for a new life 
which we see in the thought and social movement of 
the age. The history of the Reformation is not chiefly 
to be found in the octavos of Mosheim and Gieseler; 
nor in theological polemics. It is in the breathing 



The Reformation. 83 

picture of its mind, as shown in the action and atti- 
tude of the body politic. Take up the whole literature 
of the time. It is a protest against the Church. Turn 
to Italy itself. No reformer uttered more fiery satire 
than a Dante, who described the Pontiff of his own 
day in the pains of hell. In Boccaccio you have the 
very photograph of that world ; no stately denuncia- 
tion, but the jest that tells you in the grossness of the 
writer, the gross morals of the Church, which called 
forth his sneer. Turn to Germany. It appears in the 
biting satire of Eulenspiegel. Turn to England. From 
the Golias of Walter Mapes, who crushes Pope and 
monk under his rollicking Latin rhymes, to the Vision 
of Piers Plowman — the last example of the alliterative 
Saxon verse — it is the sins of the Church and the de- 
mand for Reformation which is the burden of the theme. 
No power more directly shaped English Protestantism 
than the hearty verse of a Chaucer, himself a Lollard, 
that held up to the laugh of a people the seller of indul- 
gences, the corrupt prelate and the filthy friar. Ballad 
and comedy preached louder than the pulpit. Letters 
and science were the unsparing foes of Rome. And 
thus again, in the new growth of national life, we see the 
causes which compelled the Revolution. Why was it 
that, at the appearance of Luther, we find in Saxony, in 
the Hessian provinces, princes and nobles who shield 
him from Emperor and Pope? A century before Huss 
had no protectors. That century had ripened the 



84 Epochs in Church History. 

germs of national liberty. It was seen that the coali- 
tion of Charles V. and the Pontiff meant more than 
the ruin of a humble monk ; it meant the riveting 
anew of the Ultramontane empire over the world. 
The cause of German and Swiss religion went hand 
in hand with that of civilization. 

One fact remains, perhaps the most important of 
all. At the same time when the monk of Wittenberg 
wakes all Germany (15 16 to 1520), Ulrich Zwingli 
appears in Switzerland, and a few years later, in 1535, 
the fiery apostle of France, John Calvin, begins his 
work in Geneva. There is no concert ; each catches 
the inspiration of the new time ; each finds his own 
response in thousands of waiting minds. The Ref- 
ormation rises almost simultaneously in these separate 
parts of the continent. Nor only there. It has en- 
tered Sweden with the heroic Vasa in 1529. It has 
gained Denmark, it pushes its way to the Netherlands 
in 1579. And there is no fact which more deserves 
our undying memory than that among the earliest 
lands where it blossomed were Italy and Spain. Ven- 
ice, Ferrara, where Calvin found a retreat with the 
noble Renee ; Milan, where Curio and his daughter, 
the fair and learned Olympia Morata, labored only to 
see at last the light extinguished by the Inquisition. 
It was one torrent, where all streams poured them- 
selves. It was the lightning, that cometh out of the 
East and shineth even to the West. 



The Reformation. 85 

Here, then, we learn the causes of the Reformation. 
There is no blindness greater than that of those who, 
because of the accompanying evils, have urged that it 
could have been better wrought out without the disrup- 
tion of Christendom. It is a pleasant thing to see how 
our ecclesiastics write history, how fairly, if only they 
could have the guidance of nature or life, the volcano 
would be taught to flow so as to touch no church on 
the slopes of the mountain, and the cataract be drained 
off through the canal of a General Council. But the 
Supreme Ruler does not always work after this pat- 
tern. That effort at reform had been tried for two 
centuries. The-spiritual despotism of Rome could not 
pass without a death struggle. Nay, it was its own 
act that sealed it. The Reformation did not begin in 
lawlessness. Luther appealed again and again to a 
General Council, and his appeal was only met by the 
reluctant call of the partial Ultramontane gathering 
of Trent. This is so undoubted a truth, that even 
Palmer, in justice, while he excludes the dissenters of 
England, calls the Lutheran body part of the Church, 
because it still waits for the result of Luther's appeal. 
It is indeed a most amusing style of justification, 
when such an ecclesiastical foot-rule is applied to the 
measurement of an Alpine chasm. But it is worth 
noting, as it shows the orderly spirit of the great his- 
toric movement. It was Re-formation — not revolu- 
tion. Neither Luther nor any other knew the grand- 



86 Epochs in Church History. 

eur of their own task. It had reached the point 
where the evil became intolerable, when God's Vicar 
sold pardon in open market for Peter's pence ; and in 
that hour Luther was born and his work with him. 

But if now you have seen the necessity of the Re- 
formation as a historic growth, you have the key of 
the whole subject. For it opens to us the true view of 
the question as to the fundamental character of Prot- 
estantism. Was it only a negation of past errors? 
Had it any positive basis ? It is the often repeated 
charge, that it was Protestant merely, and nowise 
Catholic. I do not care to dispute about the word 
Protestant. It was the battle-cry which from the day 
of the Diet of Spires, 1529, rallied the hosts; and it 
meant a reality for men who bore it through a century 
of strife, even if it be to-day a jest to the Churchman 
who is indifferent to the birthright which his fathers 
bought with blood. Catholic is a venerable word. 
But it has so long meant Roman, and yet means so 
much that is unreal, that I do not cling to it more 
than to the word orthodoxy. Catholic and Protestant 
are not opposites. Roman and Protestant are oppo- 
sites ; and, until we have no Roman errors to protest 
against, Protestant will remain the watch-word of the 
unended battle. But it is the fact I am concerned 
with. The Reformation was Protestant against false- 
hoods, but it clearly uttered principles of most positive 
sort. It declared that the Holy Scripture was the su- 



The Reformation. 87 

preme and sufficient oracle of necessary faith. It 
declared that faith in Christ as our justifier is the 
ground of salvation. These are its two pillars. Now 
we are told that these could never be the basis of unity. 
The Bible without Church authority is the oracle of 
sect. The doctrine of justifying faith is the plea of a 
lawless spirituality. My reply is, that this is utterly 
to misconceive both. When the Bible was declared 
the standard of authority, it was meant that while the 
infallibility of councils and traditions was denied, the 
just authority of the symbols of the Apostles and Nice 
was affirmed. Not private judgment, but a sound and 
true Christian learning was the principle. The doc- 
trine of justifying faith demanded a real, personal holi- 
ness, in distinction from an opus operatum, but in this 
it affirmed the principle of the sacraments. In this 
respect there is no difference between our English Re- 
formers and those abroad. There was no separation 
from the Church. There was the re-affirmation of its 
spiritual truths. We shall see presently when these 
are changed into one-sided systems, but here I simply 
ask you to notice that the position was clear and pure. 
Nor were the great leaders radical in their outward or- 
ganization. Luther kept the creeds and sacraments and 
a rich liturgical worship ; nay, kept a doctrine of con- 
substantiation, which leaned far too much toward the 
Latin system. Calvin kept infant baptism and the holy 
communion not simply as a memorial. If you will 



88 Epochs in Church History. 

turn to the writings of Bullinger, you have in him and 
the bulk of the divines of his day the doctrine of baptis- 
mal regeneration, as clear as in our office. Not a feature 
of visible unity was given up, save the Episcopate; but, 
if this were a loss of historic strength, it is absurd to 
forget its cause. In England the national movement 
bore with it king and bishop ; on the continent the 
order had long been reduced to be the slave of the 
Papacy. It was not suppressed ; it did not lead, but 
opposed reformation, and so took no root. Calvin 
approved the office in England. Sweden kept it. All 
this may be empty to those who make it the pivot of 
Church unity ; but in the light of history it is absurd 
to talk of Protestantism as an inorganic concrete in its 
idea or reality. When Luther was asked by the Ro- 
mish critics, " Where was your Church before your 
Reformation ? " he said : " Where was your face, be- 
fore you washed it this morning?" That is the posi- 
tion of the Reformers in a word. The Church had 
broken the hierarchical unity. To break it was to re- 
create the true unity. The Latin organization, to use 
the stately figure of Coleridge, was the unity of a 
frozen lake, where mud, stones, driftwood are embed- 
ded ; the unity of the Reformation was the spring 
that breaks the surface, and allows the organizing 
powers of life to readjust the whole ; the mud and 
stones sink to the bottom, and the stream rolls free to 
gladden the new-born banks. 



The Reformation. 89 

Here, then, we can trace the good and evil of the 
growth. The Reformation for fifty years is a victory. 
It upheld the war against Pope and emperor; it 
wrested the north from its despots ; and within itself 
its life was undecayed. But now we see signs of 
change. It is rent by jealousy between its leaders, 
by new divisions ; and the counter Reformation wins 
back many of its provinces. At the close of the six- 
teenth century, although the cause has triumphed, it 
ends only in a partial unity. 

What was the cause ? It is easy to say, with most 
Protestant historians, that it lay in the concentred 
strength of Philip II. and the Jesuits. Undoubtedly. 
But far more in the discords within itself, which crip- 
pled its unity of resistance. It came partly from the 
imperfect character of all such movements. No age 
can do more or see more than its own work. Was it 
strange that a volcano, pent up for centuries, should 
not spend at once its surges, and that men must wait 
till the vine blooms again on the slopes enriched by 
the lava ? But this is only a general view. We are 
net to excuse the defects, but to study them. There 
were in the conditions under which the Reformation 
rose, mingled elements, which soon came to the sur- 
face. We have, first, the element of a spiritual, but 
wild freedom. It appeared in the Anabaptist, and was 
more fully developed in sects like that of Fox. The 
breaking of the visible hierarchy naturally led to that 



go Epochs in C hunch History. 

idea of an invisible church, which had no links with 
the historic past. The Church must be a body of 
pure, converted men, or those who claimed an inward 
illumination of the spirit. 

Yet it is not in these lesser and earlier sects that we 
see the graver cause of disorganization. Within the 
greater bodies themselves it is soon visible. Luther, 
Calvin, Zwingli was each a giant of personal power. 
Each stamped himself on his movement, and about 
each crystallized a system. Discords arose. The first 
difference was as to the nature of the Lord's Supper. 
The great doctor of Wittenberg had retained much of 
his scholastic thought ; and while he gave up the 
mass, he upheld against the Anabaptist the sacra- 
ments ; but he had kept that notion of the ubiquity 
of Christ's twofold nature bequeathed from Augus- 
tin, and shaped by the schools before the formula of 
transubstantiation was decreed. It is one of the con- 
tradictions of his system. Zwingli stood on the sim- 
pler ground of Scripture. Again, there rose another 
strife as to Luther's doctrine of justification. The 
Augsburg Confession had not prevented this debate. 
The Formula of Concord, 1577, was but a stop-gap. 
Faith was not, as with the first thought of the Ref- 
ormation, a living act of mind and heart ; it was dis- 
connected from its real connections ; severed from the 
life of real holiness it became the pivot of a system. 
The foundation of Christian truth took the form not 



The Reformation. 91 

of belief in Christ the justifier, but of belief in a for- 
mula of justification. It was so with Calvinism. The 
great thinker had cast off the sacramental system of 
the Latin Church ; the idea of a divine election and an 
invisible unity, based on this, became the dominant 
thought. It was, as with Gottschalk, his weightiest 
weapon against a corrupt body. That truth was a 
power over not only scholar, but believer. It armed 
the devout Huguenot, as he rose from his knees to 
meet the enemy ; it edged the pikes of the Covenanter 
in the encounter among the Scottish hills. But that 
truth, shaped in the mind of Calvin from the theology 
of Augustin, and reasoned out by an abstract logic, 
was made the staple of an iron chain, and gave his 
Christianity a metaphysical tone. And thus it begat 
the very opinion which battled with it ; Arminius, 
(161 8), dared call in question the dogma of uncondi- 
tional decrees ; and in Holland the movement, that 
began with freedom of conscience, ended in the feud 
as to >whether a Christian man should believe that God 
settled from eternity the death of the wicked, or only 
foreknew it to be their choice. 

You have here the key to these changes in Protes- 
tantism. I claim it the only one, when we so study 
its historic meaning. We look with wonder at those 
strifes of supralapsarianism, and sublapsarianism ; 
but we can see how they arose. It was an age of 
theological ideas. I know it will seem a strange solu- 



92 Epochs in Church History. 

tion, but I beg you to weigh it well, when I say that 
this tendency was itself an inheritance from the past. 
Each of these questions, as I have shown, was simply 
a remnant of scholastic ideas. The Reformation had 
rid itself of the ecclesiastical falsehood ; it had not yet 
seen the scholastic root of much of the doctrinal sys- 
tem it established. It puts the idols of its schools in 
the place of the idols of the altar. It had not learned 
that the kingdom of God is not a metaphysical notion ; 
it had not learned tolerance of opinions and essential 
unity amidst differences. This spirit was the parent 
of its virtues and vices together. The Lutheran was 
conservative, intellectual, but without sympathy with 
any outside of his evangelical communion. Calvin was 
logician, scholar, hero, but he could banish Castalio or 
burn Servetus, like the malleus hereticorum of past 
time, and rule Geneva as if it were a cloister of Bene- 
dict. His spirit passed into his disciples ; it created 
Puritans, brave, conscientious, pure, yet men, who 
could, like Colonel Gardiner, look at an Arminian as 
Anti-Christ, and think a surplice a rag of unrighteous- 
ness. 

But we are not to forget in these strifes the real 
life of Protestantism. What was the Reformed Ger- 
many, the new-born Switzerland, the Huguenot 
France? A new world had arisen. Then came a 
household purity, grave, but sweet ; an education in 
university and cottage! a social thrift, a noble free- 



The Reformation. 93 

dom, which Europe never knew before ; and while the 
theologian was too often discussing election and rep- 
robation in the pulpit, the stout seaman of Holland, 
the German farmer, and the Huguenot artisan showed 
their Protestant faith in its living fruits. Yet the tares 
were with the wheat. There came to the churches of 
the continent the period of a formal orthodoxy. In 
the communion of Luther it was seen in a learned sys- 
tem, which settled every minute definition of justify- 
ing and sanctifying faith ; and in the communion of 
Calvin there were too many who lost all the loving 
heart of the Gospel in its dogmas of an arbitrary Deity, 
and a fatalism which overturned all just ideas of moral 
responsibility. Let me not be misunderstood. I am 
making no wholesale charges. There is, as I hold, 
much profound truth in these systems, and both have 
their noble place in doctrinal history. But I believe 
each has its marked defect. The result was twofold. 
Much of the spiritual life was withered, and the tone 
of religion became dull and dry. But theology lost 
yet more its relation to the intellectual life of the 
time. The nut had ripened in its protecting shell of 
doctrinal science, and now that it was ripe, and the 
shell broken, the doctors were more anxious to save 
the shell than the kernel. There had come a fresh 
spirit of inquiry with the advance of science, since 
Bacon ; and the philosophy of Descartes overturned 
all the scholastic ideas of the mind. There was needed 



94 Epochs in Church History. 

a change in the old methods of theological reasoning. 
But the Church knew little of it, although the same 
Reformation had given birth to the philosophy of the 
time. It defended its system of divinity by an appeal 
to faith ; but faith no longer meant a personal belief 
in Christ, but the acceptance of what it called myste- 
ries above reason, but which yet were only wrong 
metaphysics in disguise. Then grew unbelief. It 
was stayed in Germany for awhile by the fervid piety 
of Spener, and the Church seemed to renew its evan- 
gelical life. But the movement of Spener, like that 
of Venn and Wilberforce, wanted intellectual strength 
to meet the time, and became a sickly pietism. 

Now began that long conflict which filled the eigh- 
teenth century. It was a bold revolt against the past, 
when the intellect of Europe, tired of the fables of 
Rome, and the quarrels of Protestant sects, plunged 
into a mocking unbelief. Let us remember that Ger- 
many did not beget it ; it was the deism of England, 
it was the scepticism of Hume, which ripened into the 
materialism of France. We owe to Germany the no- 
bler philosophy that mastered it. But it was still to 
be a battle with the Christian truth. That neology 
swept away not only the Sacred Scriptures but the 
foundation principles of Revelation with a remorseless 
criticism. The error lay on one side in the unchecked 
speculation. It did not pause till the idealism of Kant 
had passed to Pantheism. But we must never forget, 



The Reformation. 9$ 

unless we would hide the truth, that it was the hard 
and lifeless theology of the time that could not meet 
it. When Neander was asked, whence the rational- 
ism of Germany, he said, " The dead orthodoxy." It 
is a volume in a word. The only answer to the Ra- 
tionalism which attacks Christian truth, is the living 
science which shows that the faith does not contra- 
dict a devout reason, which recognizes the mysteries 
of Revelation, but does not cover up its metaphysics 
by the name of the Gospel. And it is that struggle 
which has led to the true result. The strife is not 
done. But it is so far advanced that we can know 
the issue. All that is noblest in the evangelical Church 
has come forth in a new life of learning and piety.. 
Biblical criticism is born of it. It has learned by the 
better study of the Scripture to verify its essential 
truth, while it no longer reads it by the uncritical 
methods of the past. Doctrinal history is born of it. 
It has learned in the larger history of doctrine to cor- 
rect the one-sided systems of Luther or Calvin. The 
noblest works of Christian evidence are born of it. It 
can meet unbelieving science by Christian science. 
We have many errors about German theology, natural 
enough, because we have heard chiefly of its rational- 
ism, and are little acquainted with its true results. 
But there is for a true scholar nothing more cheering 
than its history. There is no domain of Christian 
learning which does not owe to it its best thought 



g6 Epochs in Church History. 

to-day. It is the full fountain, whence our own best 
generation of scholars in the English Church have 
drawn their inspiration. If it have a Baur and a 
Strauss, it has a Dorner, a Meyer, a Neander, a Rothe ; 
a host of champions, as eminent in philosophy and let- 
ters as they are loyal to the divine truth of Christ. 

And thus in this knowledge of the Protestant Ref- 
ormation, we fairly sum up our view of its character 
and its true position to-day. We have poorly read 
the lessons I have striven to teach, if we have not 
found what gives us faith and hope in all these centu- 
ries of thought and life. Let me thus gather the con- 
clusions of this history. 

We have, first of all, in the whole growth of Protes- 
tantism a working out of the truth essential to the 
real unity of Christendom. If it was, as we have 
seen, a forward step, when the withered unity was 
broken, then the intellectual activity it awoke was 
not fruitless. In that view I regard the theology of 
Protestantism. The systems of Luther or Calvin or 
Arminius are not the Gospel ; nor are they the com- 
pleted theology of the Church. But they are a real, 
positive advance in its growth. I beg you to ponder 
my line of reasoning. Theology is a gradual, pro- 
gressive knowledge. The truth of the Word of God 
is the same. Theology changes, but you go forward 
always. It is the constant addition of the better reading 
of God's word ; of clearer and fuller expositions of the 



The Reformation. 97 

one truth of God in Christ. The Latin mind had 
accepted the truth of the Incarnation, and had passed 
to the further study of the nature of man and the facts 
of sin and redemption. But it had imperfectly grasped 
that truth. It had mingled it with a mechanical view 
of the Church ; it had not understood and could not, 
the personal relation of the believer, the relation of 
the living faith and of the conscience to the Revela- 
tion of Christ. This is the contribution of Protestant 
theology to the whole Church. It had to show the 
ethical, the spiritual side of Christianity. It was 
to examine the relation of that side of Christian- 
ity to the Word of God and the ordinances of the 
Church ; the questions of liberty and law, of faith and 
works, of reason and authority. In that light I can 
see the unity of purpose, that runs through its history. 
Does a bold unbelief claim that its freedom of con- 
science means the renunciation of a divine Revelation? 
I answer, no. It means that a divine Revelation is 
so divine that it can bear the criticism of man. Does 
a lover of authority complain that its quarrelling asser- 
tions are a proof of its want of essential unity ? I an- 
swer, this is simply to forget that deeper unity which 
lies beneath the surface of all doctrinal history. Is 
Protestantism only " Variations," as Bossuet said and 
our churchmen repeat ? Each variation has its proto- 
type in the Latin communion, in Thomist and Scotist, 
in Jansenist and Jesuit. Our English Church has had 
5 



98 Epochs in Church History. 

its Arians, its Swedenborgians, its Pelagians, its 
Essayists and Reviewers, its Consubstantiationists and 
its Calvinists. They have not openly divided it : 
true, but they have been in it. We may and must 
rejoice that our simpler Creeds and our practical spirit 
have had their wise influence. We may lament the 
strifes, but we cannot cure them by a return to the 
age of an unreasoning faith. Can it be a question, 
whether we had better take the risks of neology and 
of hostile science, or renew the days when men were 
burned for doubting if a bit of bread were Christ's 
body ! It is not theology we have to fear, it is rancor, 
one-sided thought, partisan intellect, sophistry, learn- 
ing divorced from the love of Christ and the holy 
spirit of his Gospel. Can we have truth save at the 
price of free examination ? No, I hail the better 
day of our faith. But it can only be when we have 
passed through the struggle. This is what Prot- 
estant theology is to teach us. We may well learn 
its lesson. It is through it we must pass to the 
conclusion. It can only end when a sound learn- 
ing shall show us the right relation of the essential 
Gospel to all truth. It can only end when we shall 
have learned in the struggle the true unity of Rev- 
elation. 

And so it is, again, with the visible unity of wor- 
ship and of order. I cannot look on these severed 
bodies of Christendom as in a normal or healthy 



The Reformation, 99 

state. But I look, beneath the surface, at the unity 
which has never been broken. I see in them all the 
parts, albeit with a languid circulation, of the one 
Body. As sects, they are not the Church, nor are we 
in our particular features ; but they have in them 
the elements of that unity, larger than themselves. 
And when in that light I take up the history, I see 
in the Providence of God that it is thus to work out 
the larger Catholicity which no Latin hierarchy could 
fulfil, and which could only come by the free activity 
of a Protestant life. We may lament the divisions of 
sect, we must lament them, so far as they have sprung 
from a petty rivalry, or some narrow, fragmentary 
Christianity ; but we must never forget that there is 
another side in which we may and ought to see in the 
evil itself the working out of the more lasting unity of 
Christendom. Each of the great bodies of Protes- 
tantism has in its growth developed some mighty ele- 
ment of Christian power. The Lutheran has taught 
the world its richest thought, amidst its unbeliefs. 
The Calvinist was in his day the stoutest champion 
against ecclesiastical despotism. The Baptist, who 
began in wild fanaticism, was the first teacher of 
tolerance. The Methodist has met the wants of 
thousands, whom we do not reach. Each has had his 
one-sidedness, yet each has brought forward a feature 
of the Church which shall by and by enter into the 
more comprehensive whole. Am I not true to the 



ioo Epochs in Church History. 

Catholicity of our religion, if I see in these the Provi- 
dence of God, as it guides the divisions of men? 
Are we to think, as we look on the real fruits, that 
Protestant Christianity is a chaos or a failure ? The 
little minnow in his creek, who knows nothing of the 
tides of the sea, may as well think when a wave comes 
rolling in that all is chaos, as that these little critics 
of our Church and generation should draw their nar- 
row conclusions. 

But there is, beyond the view of the Church itself, a 
far more real solution. If we turn from the discords 
on the surface, and ask what, after all, has been the 
fruit of this Protestant Christianity on the real civili- 
zation of these ages, what for education, for a noble 
philanthropy, for the social issues of a time that cares 
less for Church politics than for the kingdom of Christ, 
then I say, in spite of all its rival sects, it is here I 
recognize its meaning. This is Protestantism. It 
may be a trivial view to one who sees nothing save an 
ecclesiastical machine in the Church of God. But it is 
not so to me, I look on the Church as a divine fab- 
ric, but its purpose is to educate the heart and life of 
mankind. If I go to those lands where the Reforma- 
tion has sown its seed, if I compare with the intelli- 
gence, the private morality, the social virtue of these 
the conditions of the olden time, I need no better wit- 
ness. Here, amidst all the strifes of doctrine, or the 
divisions of sect, I know the real power of a religion 



The Reformation. 101 

which has renewed the conscience. I know that I 
shall be told of the loose growth of unbelief. But I 
cannot on this account blind my eyes to the reality. 
It was the worst feature of the so-called ages of faith, 
that they obscured the moral sense of the world ; there 
could be no awakening of the intelligent belief of 
the self-governed will. It is so to-day. And it is 
the noblest gift of the Protestant Reformation to 
mankind, that it planted religion in the conscience, 
and that out of it has grown the harvest of its civ- 
ilization. 

And thus I reach the closing thought. I rejoice to 
believe that in such a view of past and present we can 
see the true promise of the future. The Church 
passed through its age of hierarchy: it must pass 
through that of doctrinal discord. Its result is not 
loss of order in one case, or truth in the other. It is 
re-conciliation. We are not to expect unity till then. 
If, in spite of error, or unbelief, the good is unanswer- 
ably beyond the evil ; if the life of the Protestant 
Reformation has thus been bound up with all the 
fruits of science, letters, social growth, surely we need not 
doubt the end. Very far am I from the idea that the 
Church of Christ is to remain this heap of discordant 
sects, or that it can reach its true condition by any 
superficial union of men or systems really at discord. 
I rejoice indeed in every such sign of union as an 
Evangelical Alliance, not because its doctrinal basis is 



102 Epochs in Church History. 

perfect, but because it can and does bring Christian 
men nearer in heart ; and as they feel the unity of 
spirit in the bond of peace, they will see the narrow- 
ness of their systems, and learn at last to stand to- 
gether on the simple ground of an Apostles' creed, to 
put away their metaphysics and prize their essential 
belief; to unlearn the strifes of the past, and feel the 
value of a historic unity. That unity can only come 
when the Calvinist shall give up his Westminster Con- 
fession as the basis of communion, the Baptist his 
notion of a perfect church of adult converts, the 
Methodist his exclusive theory of a sudden conver- 
sion ; and each and all be glad to be one in a truth 
larger than sectarian opinion. And we, too, have the 
same sect spirit to slough off; we, too, are to know 
that we are part, and only part, of the Church of God. 
And therefore it is idle to expect such a conclusion 
soon. No unripe enthusiasm will bring it. Only 
a careful study of the Word of God and a devout 
learning of history will bring it. But if we believe in 
these, if we believe in the whole truth which God 
writes in this long history, we shall gladly hail the true 
signs that such a day is dawning, and that the con- 
fused shadows of the morning twilight are melting into 
clear lines. Much has been gained already. Many 
in all these long-severed communions are longing for 
the better unity. If we have, as I truly hold, grand 
elements of historic truth and order to offer ; if we are 



The Reformation. 103 

living and large witnesses to that Church Catholic 
which lies beyond our special system, we shall help on 
that unity. If, with our theories of a Conciliar age, 
and an exclusive Episcopate, we prefer to dream of 
union with a Latin communion and a Greek Church, 
which has been frozen for ages, and to exclude this 
vast body of a Protestant Christendom with all its tides 
of intellectual and social and spiritual life ; if there be 
the man who stands aloof in his cold indifference to 
this whole age of thought and earnest striving, I have 
no part and lot in his Churchmanship. I believe indeed 
in no sectarian unity. I believe that the age to be shall 
embrace the noblest minds and hearts of all these sev- 
ered communions, Roman, or Greek, or Protestant. 
But it must come in the living way. Still, my noblest 
faith, my clearest hope, my most earnest labors are 
with the great body which bears with it the gathered 
life of history ; with the principles of that Reforma- 
tion which went forward and not backward, with that 
belief in a living Christ, that study of His open Word, 
that freedom of conscience, which are the birthright of 
the ages. There stands in the market-place of quaint 
Wittenberg, the church at whose door Luther nailed 
his Theses, and where you almost look to see his stal- 
wart form step out of the gateway, a solid monument 
on whose base are graven his own words : 

If it be man's work, it dies, 
If it be God's work, it lives. 



104 Epochs in Church History. 

The Reformation is written in that epitaph unto this 
day. What is man's work, has passed, is passing. 
What is God's work, shall have the life of God in all 
human history. 



THE ENGLISH CHURCH. 

It is not easy for the most impartial scholar to write 
an essay on the Church to which he owes his Chris- 
tian training ; and still more when the task before him 
is the character of the English communion. We have 
not yet emerged from the smoke of the battle, already 
nearing a half century, in which the deepest questions 
alike of theology and polity have divided its members ; 
and none can claim to be wholly free from the one- 
sided view of the history of his own time. Yet we 
ought, I think, to be able, at least, after so many 
years, to come nearer to an honest understanding, 
and to weigh the principles involved in the strife with 
a clearer insight than that of the Puritan or the narrow 
Churchman. That history seems to me, so far from 
being a mere strife of parties, that it is rather one of 
the most fruitful of studies, bearing at once on the past 
and the future of Reformed Christendom. I shall 
attempt to show its meaning. I cannot hope to sat- 
isfy all within or without its communion ; but as I 
have no school to defend, I may promise fair and gen- 
erous argument. If I may speak as a son, who honors 
the ancestral home with all its memories, yet never 
5* 105 



106 Epochs in Church History J 

forgets that he is the member of the Church of Christ, 
larger than the English and all communions ; if I may 
show that the principle of its structure is Catholic in 
a truer sense than that of a Latin or Anglican theory, 
one with the Catholic life of history, I shall fulfil my 
earnest wish. 

My design is to go directly to the sources of this 
history, that we may have the real character of the 
formative time, when the faith and worship of the 
Reformed Church were shaped. It is only the thor- 
ough knowledge of the facts which can guide us in 
this study of one of the most complex growths. In- 
deed the cause of all differences on this subject lies in 
the theories which have been put in the stead of his- 
toric criticism. The Church of England stands among 
the bodies of the Protestant Reformation, like those 
of continental growth in certain marked, and as I 
hold, essential features, yet in others allied with the 
ancient system before the separation. All, whether 
Lutheran or Calvinist, seem to have a homogeneous 
structure in theology and worship. This has retained, 
with its Protestant faith, its Episcopate, its early lit- 
urgy, and with it many of the archaic elements of the 
Latin age. It combines them in one building, as the 
Cathedral of Canterbury has its Norman chantry 
blended with the lofty Gothic arches. It has thus 
been the puzzle of theorists. To a Protestant it ap- 
pears a false, even dishonest compromise. To a Ro- 



The English Church. 107 

manist, from Bossuet to Newman, it is another sect 
of Protestantism, or a state creation of Henry VIII. 
Within its own communion some find in it " Roman- 
izing germs," and even say that there are two relig- 
ions struggling like Esau and Jacob at the birth. But 
the favorite theory of the Anglican is still that of the 
Via Media, the starting point of the Oxford revival 
(of which its most stalwart champion, Mr. Newman, 
has been the most logical refuter), according to which 
it represents in its idea a Catholic unity, alike apart 
from the sectarianism of Rome or Protestantism, 
based on the unbroken Episcopate and general coun- 
cils. This, then, is the problem before us. I shall 
endeavor to show you that none of these theories 
solve it. I shall show that it was not built by any 
such preconceived theory at all ; that it was a natural 
historic growth, and that such growth at once ex- 
plains its partial defects, its discordant struggles, yet 
its comprehensive character, and the work it has to 
do in the common aim of Protestant Christendom. 

Let us ask, then, at the outset, what were the causes 
of the Reformation in the English Church, and we can 
then trace the spiritual character of its development 
in theology and polity. It cannot be doubted that 
the movement was one with the general convulsion 
which shook Europe. It was no insulated Hecla, 
whose volcanic fires were felt only within its own bor- 
ders, but the great pulses ran underground, and burst 



108 Epochs in Church History, 

at the same time in Germany, France, England. The 
revolt was against the common usurper. All the 
forces of the new civilization, as I have shown in my 
former lecture, the religious freedom, the national 
growth, the freshly awakened spirit of literature, 
entered into the war. The Latin claim of universal 
power had become in that age as much a political as 
a religious affront. But herein was the marked dif- 
ference between the outbreak of the Reformation in 
England and on the Continent, that while in the latter 
it began, by the necessity of the case, as a revolt against 
the Church authority, under a few great leaders, in 
the former it was a national movement. To under- 
stand that weighty fact fully, we need to study the 
earlier history of religious thought in the island. I 
can only here give the main features of it. The in- 
sular position of England had, after the consolidation 
of the Conquest, given it a greater unity of develop- 
ment in its political and religious life. It had accepted 
the supremacy of the Roman Church, yet it is the 
striking fact that even the Conqueror forbade the 
intrusion of the Papal legate on his own right of eccle- 
siastical appointment. That jealousy of foreign rule 
grew into a spirit of determined resistance, after the 
beginning of the thirteenth century, when the election 
of Bishops had been claimed by the Roman See, the 
clergy placed above the jurisdiction of the courts, and 
the shameless John had even held his kingdom in fee. 



The English Church. 109 

Richard II. had maintained the prcernunire, Edward 
III. had refused the annates. Although in the long 
wars of the Roses the Roman Church had again seized 
its opportunity, the nation was growing ready for its 
final struggle. In this light we can rightly understand 
that work of John Wyclif, which is often regarded as a 
shortlived effort of one man, with little influence on 
the after history. The fact is just the reverse. Wyclif 
was indeed far in advance of his time in his insight 
into the doctrinal errors of the Latin Church. It was 
not his theological attacks, but his bold exposure of 
the vices of the clergy, the simony, the greed, the lust 
and lawlessness, especially in the monastic orders, 
which made him the forerunner of the Reformation. 
He was, in the truest sense, a leader in the social ideas 
of his time. No stronger proof can be given of his in- 
fluence, than that his argument against the right of 
the Papacy to levy taxes in the kingdom led to the 
decision of king and council in 1360. He was not, 
like John of Wesel or Tauler, a cloister thinker, but, 
like Luther himself, an outspoken, active leader. His 
Schisma Papce, A.D. 1378, is an arraignment of the Pon- 
tiff as an invader of the national Church and State. 
It was this teaching that sank into the soil to 
bear later fruit, although his movement was seemingly 
crushed, perhaps because there were some communistic 
elements in Lollardism, more probably because the 
deeper truth was not yet ripened in the national mind. 



no Epochs in Church History. 

The translation of the New Testament was one of 
the germs of the new English literature. We have 
proof enough of the steady growth of the ideas 
planted by the apostle of Lutterworth in the fact that, 
in 1485, on the eve of the Reformation, it was said by 
the angry ecclesiastics, that " half the kingdom was 
Lollard." And if we seek the real signs of the time, 
we shall read far better than in any theological trea- 
tises or acts of Parliament the living history of England 
in the literature, from the satire of Walter Mapes to 
the tales of Chaucer, and the popular songs, where we 
see the vices of the Church portrayed in their full 
colors for the scorn of the nation. 

We have here, then, the view of the movement, at 
once social and religious, which explains the final issue 
in the reign of Henry VIII. Nothing can be more un- 
true to history than the charge so often brought by 
Romish sophists and embittered dissenters, nay, by 
even grave historians, that this utter change of a 
national religion was caused by the quarrel of this king 
about his divorce. It is as absurd as to find the secret 
of the German Reformation in the dislike of the friar 
Luther to the inteference of Tetzel with his monkish 
order. We need not here ask whether the king was 
right or wrong in the matter of his harem ; nor shall I 
certainly paint him as the " fine old English gentle- 
man," whom Mr. Froude has found under the coarse 
daubings of history. The only weighty point for us is 



The English Church. in 

that he was the occasion, but not the cause of the cri- 
sis. We are more indebted to Mr. Froude, that he 
has cast such fuller light from the historic documents 
on the fact that the English Parliament had, before 
the broken marriage, passed its great act of national 
divorce, by which the allegiance to the Roman See 
was annulled forever. It should be plain, indeed, that 
the Reformation could never have leaped at one stride 
into such a schism, had there not been a full ripening 
in the national conscience. We have studied its steps. 
It was the critical act of the long history. But it en- 
ables us to see, moreover, precisely the difference in 
the formation of the English Church from that of the 
continent. In Germany, the strength of the empire 
was on the side of the Papacy, and only a few lesser 
princes could protect the Reformers. The Bishops 
and ecclesiastical leaders were against change. It was 
the necessity of Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin to organ- 
ize the movement alone. But in England, King, Par- 
liament, and people were united ; and although the 
larger part of the prelates and clergy at that time 
were unwilling actors in any open reformation, as they 
usually are, they were forced to accept the fact. I 
confess to a far greater admiration of a colossal man, 
like the monk of Wittenberg, alone against Leo X. 
and Charles V., than of a Cranmer, who played the 
mingled part of apostle and courtier. And we should 
as readily admit the evils of the Church establishment, 



112 Epochs in Church History. 

which, although in theory the king was not the spirit- 
ual but only the temporal head, made him really 
another Pontiff, and the prelates satraps of this royal 
despot. But of this I shall speak more at length 
hereafter. I am chiefly concerned here with the char- 
acter of the growth. It is enough to say, that the Ref- 
ormation could have taken at that time no other 
shape. It was a national act. To throw off the su- 
premacy of the Latin usurper was simply to return to 
the national relations of State and Church as they 
were. That beginning shaped the whole after growth. 
There was not, as in Germany or Switzerland, a free 
development of religious thought and life. There was 
not such an alliance of the Reformation with the 
growth of the people. The English Church repre- 
sented the Anglo-Norman type of the State in the 
character of its prelates and its policy of uniformity. 
I am persuaded, indeed, and the more so from the 
later studies of historians like Freeman into the state 
of England after the conquest, that much of the Puri- 
tan spirit, which was lashed into just anger in the next 
age, was the revival of the old Saxon liberty, now lost 
under Norman aristocracy. Its hatred to the estab- 
lishment grew out of the yoke of Norman prelacy, and 
allied itself at last with the political strife that ended 
in a free Parliament. But while we see the defects, 
we are bound to acknowledge in these great elements 
of national growth what shaped the historic unity and 



The English Church, 113 

life of the Church. It kept it conservative of all in the 
faith and order of the past which was truly Catholic, 
while at the same time no Protestant power could 
wield such compact strength, at once political and re- 
ligious, against the Roman usurpation. Had it not been 
for this, England would have been reconquered in the 
next period of counter Reformation, when the Protes- 
tantism of France was broken in spite of its vast growth, 
and Germany was torn in pieces as much from the 
want of unity in the Reformed bodies as by the league 
of Catholic powers. This solidarity of the nation kept 
it in its growth less liable to the strifes of religious party, 
which could not be escaped in this early time of intel- 
lectual and moral awakening, yet had sundered the 
Reformers into theological fragments. It gave time 
for a sure ripening. We do not find any swift or 
thorough development in the reign of Henry. The 
"Articles devised to establish Christian quietness," 
and the "Institution of a Christian man," following in 
1537, show that the dogmas of the mass, the seven sac- 
raments, intercessory prayer for the dead, reverence 
of Mary and the saints, and purgatory were still re- 
ceived. It is the transition period, which our ritualistic 
revivalists would like to exhume as the golden age of 
Anglican faith. But the next reign proves that the 
act of national freedom held the whole result in solu- 
tion. Ultramontanism meant then, as now, the scho- 
lastic and priestly system blended with the feudal 



H4 Epochs in Church History. 

headship of Rome. It needed only a few years of 
national progress for the Reformation to come forth a 
ripe fact in the minds of Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, and 
the host of scholars who represent the England of that 
time. We have, in the publication of the Liturgy in 
its first form in 1549, the draft of doctrine and wor- 
ship ; and finally, under Elizabeth in 1563, the Articles 
and second book of Homilies, which give us the stand- 
ard of the Church of England. 

We may now, with this clear knowledge of the 
character of the national Reformation, study the his- 
tory of religious thought and life in the English 
Church as it has shaped itself in theology and polity. 
It is in the Articles of Religion, as embodying the doc- 
trines of the Reformers, we are to find our standard ; 
but we are to learn their harmony with the principles 
of the Liturgy. We have had of late years the the- 
ory, broached by the Oxford school of Pusey, and 
largely received, that there was a defined system of 
what is called Anglo-Catholic theology to be found in 
the offices of the Church, preserving the Nicene faith 
and severing it from the doctrinal system of conti- 
nental Protestants. My wish is to show the true his- 
toric unity in place of this baseless theory. It is be- 
cause the theology of a later school, after the time of 
the Restoration, has been mistaken for the Consensus 
of the English Church, that the principles of the Ref- 
ormation have been so poorly understood. Happily, 



The English Church. 115 

within these few years, the more critical study of the 
elder Fathers from Jewel and Ridley to Hooker has 
taught us the sober truth. It has taught us the essen- 
tial harmony of their theology with the Protestants 
of the Continent, and at the same time the reason of 
their difference in certain features. If we turn, first 
of all, to the cardinal doctrines of the Reformation, 
as they were received by Luther and Calvin, the su- 
premacy and sufficiency of the truth of Scripture as 
above tradition, the personal faith in Christ instead 
of the operative grace of sacraments, we find as strong 
a definition in the articles as in any of the confessions. 
But not only is there this general agreement ; it is 
clear that the likeness is a minute one in many feat- 
ures. The articles of the Trinity and Incarnation 
are almost the same with the Augsburg and Wurtem- 
burg Confessions. The statements of sin and grace, 
of free will, are like the Lutheran. The view of tradi- 
tion, of works, the definition of the Church, of the 
authority of councils, of the nature and number of sac- 
raments is common with Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin. 
Yet it is clear, again, that in regard to the doctrines, 
afterward the root of discord in Holland, of predesti- 
nation and reprobation, while there is a substantial 
unity, there is a more moderate tone than in the Cal- 
vinistic Confessions. We have here, then, the plain 
key to the resemblance. All the Reformers, alike in 
England or abroad, agreed in the rejection of the 



n6 Epochs in Church History, 

scholastic theology of the Latin Church, as it had 
ripened into the notions of the infallible authority of 
tradition, the opus operatum of the sacraments, and the 
priestly form. All, again, went back to the earlier 
theology of Augustin, and received his teaching as the 
basis of their system. 

But we are now to compare with the articles the 
doctrinal ideas contained in the liturgy. It is the 
common mistake that the doctrine of baptismal regen- 
eration has no kindred with Protestant theology, and 
it is looked on alike with doubt by the Evangelical 
and with delight by the Anglo-Catholic. Yet a study 
of the Continental reformers shows us that it was the 
teaching not only of the Lutheran, but the Calvinist. 
We find it in Melancthon, in Bullinger, precisely as in 
the English office. The explanation is simple. All 
the Reformers, while they rejected the Latin scholastic 
dogma of opus operatum, adopted the Christology of 
Augustin. This theology led them to the truth of a 
personal faith in the reception of the sacrament, but 
they had not yet any doubt of the metaphysical real- 
ism on which Augustin based his view of sacramental 
union. Christ, as the new Adam, was united in soul 
and body with believers ; and as faith was necessary 
to spiritual union, the sacraments were the instrument 
of union with His body the Church. Regeneration was 
this incorporation with Him in baptism. But the same 
view is seen still further in the Communion Office. It 



The English Church. 117 

is in entire agreement with the doctrine of Calvin. It 
is far from so extreme an idea of sacramental presence 
as the notion of Luther. Yet it contains expressions 
which to many are far from spiritual, as the partaking 
of the body of the Lord. The same Christology of Au- 
gustin was their source. The grace was not, as the Re- 
formers held, in the elements, but was received in the 
act of faith from Christ himself, but it was the partak- 
ing in sacramental union of the spirit and body of the 
Lord. We need only to turn to the writings of Calvin 
and compare them with Hooker to know their agree- 
ment. It is clear, therefore, that the idea of any 
essential difference in the theology of the English 
Prayer Book and that of the Reformers has no ground 
whatever. The difference lies mainly in the fact that 
we have retained in these offices the archaic form of 
expression ; and thus our traditional school is able to 
make out of them a plausible proof of Anglican doc- 
trine, while the metaphysical notion mingled with the 
Christology of that time has gone. Protestant theol- 
ogy has outgrown the errors of Augustin. Anglo- 
Catholic theology has kept them. It is alike absurd 
to build such a theory on the prayer book, as to find 
fault with a few archaic forms. If the phrase " Ro- 
manizing germs " were changed to " vestiges of school 
theology," it will give us the very truth. If we will 
so study our articles and liturgy in the light of history 
we shall never repeat the absurd satire, attributed to 



Ii8 Epochs in Church History. 

Chatham, that the " English Church has a Popish lit- 
urgy and Calvinistic articles." 

But while the theology of the Church was thus clearly 
one with that of the reformed bodies, it is undoubt- 
edly true that its structure as a national body gave it 
a different tone. Protestant theology tended always 
toward the creation of separate confessions, and its 
original unity was shattered by this unhappy spirit. 
It was the excellence of the English Church that it 
kept before it this unity of faith. It thus placed 
the Apostles' Creed foremost as the simple test 
of Church membership. It gave the Nicene symbol 
its high rank as the witness to the foundation truth 
of believers. There was not, as its Articles prove, any 
design to accept the Nicene age or its councils as of 
supreme authority. Hooker is as clear on that point 
as the Articles. But there was a design to draw the 
line between the universal, plain faith of Christian 
men and the subtleties of scholastic opinion. That 
spirit undoubtedly led to the more moderate tone of 
the Articles which I have noted before. It is a rare 
criticism of Maurice that in their arrangement the great 
truths of the Trinity and the Incarnation are placed 
first, while the dogma of decrees begins the Confession 
of Westminster. Their spirit was of men who rebuilt 
the Church, and did not form a school. We may call 
the Articles a " compromise " if we will. A glass of 
water is such a compromise between two inflammable 



The English Church. 119 

gases. The biographer of Field tells us, I think, the 
character of most divines of that time, that " on points 
of extreme difficulty he did not think fit to be so posi- 
tive in defining as to turn matters of opinion into mat- 
ters of faith." We have in them at once- a thorough 
Protestantism, yet a better understanding of freedom 
and comprehensiveness of thought than could be else- 
where found in that theological age. It was the Church 
broad enough to hold Hooker and Whitgift and Tay- 
lor. And there are two omissions in the Articles which 
are as remarkable as some of their definitions. The suf- 
ficiency of Scripture is affirmed, but there is no dogma 
of verbal or plenary inspiration. In this the English 
Church has kept the spiritual faith of Luther and the 
first age instead of the dogmatism of the after schools. 
There is, again, no doctrine of everlasting punishment 
in its system, but, on the contrary, it was distinctly 
omitted in the revision. I will not dwell on these 
points, but only mark them to give you a just idea of 
the characteristics of these Articles of religion and 
those who compiled them. 

As regards the Liturgy, the Holy Communion office 
was shaped by the view of Calvin. It is, in its ideas 
of a participation of spirit and body, precisely the 
same with the doctrine of the Continental Reformer, 
based on the Aristotelian notions of spirit and matter, 
yet freed from the error of a transubstantiation. It 
is so again with the view of regeneration in the Baptis- 



120 Epochs in Church History, 

mal office. Although claimed by our Anglo-Catholics 
as not Protestant, and decried by the opposite side as 
having " Romish Germs," it is the same doctrine 
found by any scholar in Melancthon or in Bullinger. 
There must always be archaic forms in such a liturgy, 
which retain ideas of scholastic thought. As I said 
before, if the phrase " Romanizing Germs" were 
changed to " vestiges of school divinity," it would ex- 
press the exact truth. We are to read these expressions 
as such, and if we do we shall never be disturbed lest 
the Prayer Book be unsound ; nor shall we ever fall 
into the Bibliolatry which opposes a wise Revision. 

Thus, again, with a few other portions, like the 
" Absolution " in the Office for the Sick, and the Atha- 
nasian Creed. We have most wisely omitted them ; 
the one as easily abused to error ; the other as the 
uncatholic deposit of a later age, and a piece of meta- 
physics unsuited to worship, as well as unchristian in 
its style of curses. But we are to judge the work 
of the Reformers by their own clear principles. If 
we so study we shall never mistake their Protes- 
tantism. 

The Prayer Book was one work of men who sought 
to purify yet keep the National Church. 

One point remains, that of the Episcopate. It was re- 
tained by the same law, as primitive, historic, national. 
It did not in this separate itself from the Reformation. 
Had the Continental Reformation taken with it such 



The English Church. 121 



M> 



men as the Old Catholics, it would doubtless have kept 
the order. But there was not one leading divine, from 
Hooper to Hooker, who ever claimed more than his- 
toric and primitive usage as the ground of Episcopal 
authority, or pretended that it was of the essence of 
the Church. I challenge safely the proofs. Whitgift, 
the High Churchman of Elizabeth's time, in his reply 
to the attack of Cartwright against the prelacy, as not 
prescript in God's Word, distinctly affirmed that "to 
hold it of necessity that we have the same kind of 
government as in the Apostles' time, and expressed 
in Scripture," is "a rotten pillar." It was the Puritan 
of that day who held this view and was the narrow 
theorist. It is the Anglo-Catholic of our own time 
who takes Puritan ground. If we read, as so many 
do, the words of the Prayer-book, as maintaining more 
than the assertion of the historic fact, we simply deny 
the whole catena of early English divinity. Nor only 
so. No notion of an exclusive Episcopacy, even in 
later times, when Bancroft and Laud had naturalized 
it, gained footing as a Church principle. Field, Bram- 
hall, Hall, Usher, did not hold it. Morton, although 
bitter against the Presbyterians, and not without 
reason, declared that " he could never unchurch the 
bodies of the Continent for an infelicity, not a fault." 
All the poor debate as to whether foreign divines held 
livings in the English Church is waste paper. There 
would be as much sense in claiming, because only a 



122 EpocJis in Church History. 

naturalized Englishman could hold office, that England 
denied the validity of all other government. The 
Bishop remained, as the King remained, part of the 
English structure, guarded by long precedent, and by 
loyal affection. We can never surrender this sober 
ground for any notion of our ecclesiastical sophists. 
We change the whole foundation of the Reformed 
Church if we attempt it. And it is as untrue to history 
that there was any want of communion with Protes- 
tant Churches of the~ Continent. The source of our 
common mistake is in confounding the quarrel at home 
with dissenters, Avhich had both State and Doctrinal 
elements in it, with the position of England toward 
the Continent. The whole record down to the day of 
Charles, shows a kindly alliance ; a close conference 
with Melancthon, Bullinger, Calvin, in regard to the 
common welfare of Christendom, in questions of the- 
ology and worship. I must be pardoned if I dwell too 
long on facts which no scholar ought to be ignorant 
of; but we have had of late years so much distorting 
theory that they may seem novelties. I would convince 
you that, in claiming this broad and comprehensive 
ground, I am only planting you on the Church of the 
English Fathers. 

Now in this study of its formative age, you have 
the explanation of the marked character of the Eng- 
glish Church, and its whole history afterward. It was 
a growth, just as its structure of government has been 



The English Church, 123 

a growth, with all its seeming opposites of royal pre- 
rogative and popular freedom ; even in Tudor and 
Stuart reigns keeping the germ given in the earliest 
Witan, and so by degrees working out a constitutional 
commonwealth. That government is always a puzzle 
to all doctrinaires. The French republican scorns it 
as far below his model of '92, yet he cannot get a re- 
public which grows ; and so the doctrinaire in religious 
polity cannot explain it. The Calvinist or the Cath- 
olic finds in its Articles a mass of contradictions, a 
compromise without positive principle. And then the 
Anglican attempts to construct it into his Via Media. 
It was in his view a definite system, meant to exclude 
Romish principles on one side and Protestantism on 
the other ; to combine the Catholic features of the 
Church in one symmetrical whole of creed and council 
and episcopate. But I think I have shown you that 
it was not this at all. It is simply impossible to deny 
that it was distinctly Protestant, that it had in it the 
same origin and the same ideas as all Protestant bo- 
dies, and its difference was in certain peculiarities of 
structure. But it is in this very character that I claim 
its real Catholicity lies. It has through this national 
and real position witnessed to those common, historic 
features of Christianity, which, although never lost, 
have been too much set aside through the theological 
disputes of Protestantism. It maintained by the 
Episcopate a regard to settled law, a reverence for 



124 Epochs in Church History. 

the ministry, which has often been impaired in other 
forms of polity. It fostered a sound, practical train- 
ing in the Church in its whole system of worship, 
while elsewhere a subjective piety, a religion of the 
emotions or of notional tendencies, has become the 
gospel. This is its Catholicity. Catholic and Protes- 
tant, I have said before, are not opposites. Protestant 
and Roman are opposites. It grew out of its charac- 
ter. It is the fabric of a national Church, in which as 
in the State the composition of these many elements 
has given a mellow, well-tempered strength ; as Nor- 
man and Anglo-Saxon and Dane have made a people 
nobler than any unmixed race ; as the strong speech 
of Alfred and the courtly grace of France made the 
language of Shakespeare. There is nothing ideally 
perfect in such a church. There could not be so rich 
a development of Christian theology as with the Lu- 
theran mind. The Teuton was speculative, like the 
Greek, the Saxon had somewhat of the Latin prag- 
matic genius, which built a church, not a metaphysi- 
cal system. There could not be so intense or free an 
activity as with the Calvinist. The principle of the 
English Church was what Paley touches so happily in 
his Political Essays, where he compares the State to 
an old manor house, built years ago, with all styles of 
architecture, a bit of Gothic and a bit of Elizabethan, 
a story or an out-building added by the new genera- 
tion ; yet, after all, roomy, pleasant by its very irregu- 



The English Church. 125 

larities, endeared by ancestral ties, and much better 
than a new house. 

And thus we may now understand the whole process 
of its history. Had the plan of its Reformation 
(the comprehensive plan) been carried out, it would 
have been the meeting point of Protestant reform. It 
was not the principle of a National Church, but its spirit 
of comprehensive freedom, which was forgotten. As 
it was, that history has been a slow groping after its 
original purpose. It has not had the homogeneous 
character of Lutheranism or Calvinism ; but often con- 
tradictory elements, often reaction. It has needed all 
the periods since to ripen the germ. But it has never 
lost the original type ; and it is to-day, after the years 
of its last reaction, surely passing toward the idea of 
its founders. This is what I wish now briefly to show, 
and in that view we may read its history with fairness. 

In that first age, whose culminating point is with 
Richard Hooker, I do not fear to say we have its 
noblest period. Whatever others may call the time of 
the Fathers, it is here we find the nearest approach to 
a comprehensive Church. It was the ^ge that created 
the richest growths of genius, the birth-time of Shake- 
speare, Bacon, Spenser ; and its religion was born of 
the same grand causes. There is a freshness and vigor 
of Protestant life, an intensity of an intellectual as well 
as spiritual struggle. The Ecclesiastical Polity of 
Hooker is the first grand monument of English prose 



126 EpocJis in Church History. 

writing. But it is more. It is the stateliest building 
of English Christianity. Nothing can more fully prove 
the littleness of our latest ecclesiastical school than 
its utter misreading of the great jurist ; nothing can 
be more apart from their defects than he who, instead 
of their Nicene tradition, has laid down the principles 
of law inherent in the structure of the Christian State. 
His ideas of the past are in harmony with a sound 
reason ; his view of the Church broad and generous ; 
his claim for the Episcopate based on historic prece- 
dent, and the fullest admission of the whole body, as 
the fountain of power or the constitutional system. It 
was the spirit of the Church of England. He was the 
Broad Churchman of that day. Oxford divinity has 
no more right in him than the Puritan of his time. 
But we now perceive the growing discords pass into 
open strife ; and surely it is full time for us in this 
calmer period to weigh fairly the right and wrong of 
either side.- The doctrine of the Church, the scheme 
of a comprehensive worship, was indeed far larger than 
the theology or practical spirit of the Puritan. We 
need only turn to the remains of that time to know it. 
If we read the attacks of Cartwright and Travers, we 
can see in the men who denounced Episcopacy as 
Anti-Christ, and counted the symbol of the cross idol- 
atry, a far narrower mind than in the jurist and states- 
man, Hooker. The earliest preacher of tolerance in 
that day is Taylor, in his Liberty of Prophesying. But 



The English Church. 127 

with all this, the Church was tyrannical in its policy of 
uniformity. It might have won and kept the more 
extreme reformers, and have saved not only the Church 
but the nation from civil war. In the day of Laud 
this policy reached the point of cruel persecution. I 
cannot wonder at the revolt, when the cause of relig- 
ion and submission to the absolutism of the Stuarts 
were identified. I regard it as the saddest evil when 
at the Restoration that body of honest, heroic men, 
whatever their own faults, was at last severed from the 
Church of England. From that hour the Church 
ceased to be truly national, and dissent became a full- 
grown fact. 

We have from this hour of the Restoration a change 
in the character of the English Church. Its balance 
was lost. The class who maintained a more exclusive 
churchmanship gained far greater influence. It was 
mingled with that hard establishment policy, some- 
times a high toryism, sometimes a selfish State con- 
servatism, which opposed all just liberty. Yet with all 
our dislike of those ecclesiastical features we are never 
to lose sight of the fact that the Church of England was 
not in that age or any other narrowed into one party 
or one school. It is a striking feature that from the 
day of- Laud there entered into the theology of Eng- 
land the large leaven of Arminianism. And it reveals 
the singular contradictions which are to be found in 
the strifes of that time. We are often told that Ar- 



128 Epochs in Church History. 

minianism is more akin to a High Church theology, be- 
cause it teaches that divine grace may be conditioned 
by works. Yet, as in the case of Jansenism, it only 
shows that a rigid metaphysical creed may drive men 
to its opposite. The simple truth is that while Laud 
and his followers were narrow in ecclesiastical policy, 
the Calvinist was equally narrow in his doctrinal shib- 
boleths. The English Church was large enough to 
hold both. We have here the just view of the change. 
Arminianism represented the dislike of an iron supra- 
lapsarianism, and the milder spirit of scholars like 
Jeremy Taylor. And so we know how fairly to meas- 
ure the true growth of that period in spite of its de- 
fects. We are justly proud of the names of Bramhall, 
Cosin, and many more whose learning and piety 
adorned the Church ; but when our Anglo-Catholics 
to-day vaunt them as THE Fathers of the Church, we 
cannot accept it. It is that time which gives us Stil- 
lingfleet, Chillingworth, Usher, and many like scholars 
of large mind and most generous sympathies. It is 
then we see the beginnings of that Platonic school 
which boasts such names as Cudworth, More, Which- 
cote, the thinkers of the Church. The original breadth 
of the Reformation had not passed away. No school 
was able to dwarf it. 

But we pass to the next period, which runs through 
the Georges. It is common for both Evangelical and 
later High Churchmen to upbraid it as a time of a dull 



The English Church, 129 

State religion and a dead spirituality. Undoubtedly it 
was so. But we are to remember that it had a host of 
the noblest scholars and good men. Burnet is the 
type of the beginning of the period. It is common to 
sneer at him. His book on the Articles is better than 
Brown. It is broad, moderate, wholesome. Then 
follows the list of scholars who are best represented by 
Tillotson. It was the time of the long battle with 
English deism. There was, without doubt, a less 
spiritual thought in many divines from Tillotson to 
Paley. But the Church produced Butler and others of 
the same mould. It produced a theology full of mas- 
culine thought and range. And, for my own part, 
w r hile I detest his ethics, I think the common sense of 
Paley a great relief from the devout mysticism of mod- 
ern Oxford. And it was, thank God, that age of Eng- 
land which shaped this Church in America ; an age of 
neither Evangelical nor Anglican High Churchman- 
ship, but that of good sense, rational doctrine, practical 
piety. 

Yet there were influences which made the Church 
grow secular. The balance, I repeat, had been dis- 
turbed (not the piety or truth, but the balance), by the 
loss of the life which went into dissent, and which left 
the Church to its excessive conservatism. It needed 
reaction. It had reached at last the time when it 
had neglected its function for the people, and the 

pulpit was the place where the elegant rhetoric of a 
6* 



130 Epochs in Church History. 

Blair or a cold discourse on natural theology was the 
fashion. 

And now came the movement of Wesley. It was 
in its beginning " full of the Holy Ghost and of 
power." It entered into the colliery, the farm, the 
hovels of the ignorant and wretched ; and thousands 
were awakened to new life as they listened to the 
voice of God in the street and on the moor. It is 
false to say that the movement was driven out from 
the English Church. There was coldness ; but Wesley 
was welcomed to many pulpits. It was his own ex- 
travagance that to a great degree checked his influ- 
ence. I point you to the history. But it is true that 
the English Church was neither as wise nor as kindly as 
it should have been. Yet the influence was by no 
means lost. A* few years more and another wave of 
religious life broke over the dry soil in the Evangelical 
movement of Wilberforce and Venn and Simeon. 
There was deep piety and earnest zeal in it. It 
touched the national heart ; it changed the tone of the 
whole time. Yet it had not in it the elements of a large 
Church life. There was not in its leaders the learning 
to meet the mind of England ; it did little to meet the 
keen unbelief of its time ; it tended to a religion of 
the emotions ; it had no true appreciation of Church 
history or profound theology. But it has not died. It 
will not die. What is in it of life is passing out of its 
party shape to mingle with all that is free and living 



The English Church. 131 



"43 



in the body. We reach here the history of our own 
times. It is half a century since the movement be- 
gan which has ever since agitated that communion. I 
can only glance at the causes and the significance of 
the Catholic revival, as it is called by its devotees ; 
and I would do it fairly. We make a dull mistake 
when we think it a dream of a few cloistered men at 
Oxford ; it came out of the whole intellectual and 
social strife of the time ; it is only one wave of that 
reactionary current which to-day agitates European 
Christendom. I shall never deny the learning or the 
piety in which it arose. If you will read its autobiog- 
raphy take up the Apologia pro Vita Sua of Newman, 
the very secret of its sincere aims and its marvellous 
defects. It was at the time when England began to 
feel the questions stirring the mind of our time which 
touch the authority of Scripture, and the doctrines and 
uasges of the past ; when science already seemed hos- 
tile to Christianity. Its leaders felt the deadness of 
the Establishment, the growing strength of a liberal- 
ism without religion. In the beginning they only 
aimed to revive the English Church in its unity of 
creed and order and life. Nor can we wonder that 
such a movement did awaken a deep sympathy on 
every side when it created sacred poets like Keble, 
and devout scholars like Newman ; when it recreated 
Christian art, infused a reverent devotion into wor- 
ship, and, yet more, did noble work among the poor. 



132 Epochs in Church History. 

More than this ; I allow the Anglo-Catholic principle, 
the Catholic consensus of the Church. Its error lay 
in identifying that with the tradition of the past, in- 
stead of passing through the whole history of the 
Church. Its leaders were doctrinaires, bookish think- 
ers, who set up an ideal of the Church. They feared 
the life of the time. They saw no hope save in the 
past. They had no faith in the Protestantism of their 
own time. They looked backward to a Nicene period 
as the Catholic kingdom of Christ. It was thus that 
their theory led them back inevitably to an infallible 
Church, a sacramental system, a priesthood. Men saw 
the inconsistency but blindly. The voice was the 
voice of Jacob, the hands were the hands of Esau. 
The great leaders were, by the logic of their own posi- 
tion, swept into the Church of Rome. Yet the whole 
movement did not die. It was the logical result of 
a High Church theory. It could not pass, until the 
principles on which it was based should be thoroughly 
sifted. And hence there followed that Ritualistic con- 
test which to-day divides us. Its singular power lies 
in its popular character. The Oxford leaders were 
scholastic. This is more suited to the English mind. 
Its argument is in free chapel, and labor among the 
poor. But its error is at the root. That contest must 
not be mistaken. It is no question of chasubles and 
incense ; it is the question whether the Church of 
England shall be true to the principles of the Refor- 



The English Church. 133 

mation, or shall set up as the distinct idea of the 
Church the exclusive idea of an Episcopacy, a priestly 
authority, a Church tradition that binds the con- 
science instead of the open Word of God. This is 
the issue. We are beginning to see it. We are be- 
ginning to see that this mongrel dialect, half English 
and half Italian, belongs only to men who live on the 
frontier, and have so learned to talk poorly in two 
languages. In that view I hold and have ever held 
that the Ritualistic contest was a necessary evil. I 
believe we shall learn from it the real baselessness of 
the theory which underlies it. The Anglo-Catholic 
reaction is teaching us a sounder learning. It has 
thriven by its hold on the traditional faith and rever- 
ence of men. It is like that well-preserved corpse, 
which, when the sarcophagus was opened, appeared 
perfect in feature, but at the first exposure fell to 
dust. Let in the air of better learning. This will 
bring the true result. 

And I believe that hour is nigh at hand. I know 
there are many who look with sad distrust on our 
time. Old lines of division are gone, old, respectable 
wars of high and low are over, and every shade of 
opinion is on the surface ; Catholic and semi-Catho- 
lic ; broad, and high-broad and broad evangelical. 
Men say, " We know not our tokens, there is not one 
that understandeth any more." It is sad indeed for 
those unhappy Churchmen who have been wont to 



134 Epochs in Church History. 

have all their thinking done for them by one infalli- 
ble Pontiff in a pulpit or newspaper. But there are 
consolations. I noticed on Lake Champlain that at 
close of winter there was a noise like artillery at night, 
and in the morning a rude fissure in the surface, and 
so it grew, till the ice was a network, and then next 
morning I saw the blue water and the ice packed in 
the corners. That is the moral of this breaking. Men 
mistake the ice for an unchanging floor, or the fissures 
for no more than surface cracks. The mind and heart 
of the English Church are sound. It has Protestant 
common sense. And it has a deep religious strength. 
We must expect some derangement after thirty years 
of Tractarian quarrel. It was not strange that the 
u Essays and Reviews " should startle sober England; 
yet after all it was only the tonic of a Russian cold 
plunge after the somewhat enfeebled state of the in- 
tellectual muscles from the hot bath of Oxford. Look 
under the surface. There has never been a time 
when a richer intellectual or spiritual activity has ap- 
peared. Out of this strife there has come a more 
thorough criticism of Scripture, and of Church history. 
Our English scholars are exploring anew the Fathers, 
and correcting the one-sided notions of Pusey and Wil- 
berforce, testing the difference of the worship of a Ni- 
cene age and sober, historic order, and the end will be 
an escape from the " rival follies." I point to its schol- 
ars in every field : Lightfoot, Westcott, the noble 



The English Church. 135 

Arnold, Stanley, Maurice, Ellicott, Howson ; its liv- 
ing preachers; Robertson, Liddon, the Bishop of Pe- 
terboro'. I name them without distinction of school. 
England can hold them all. We shall gain all the 
blessings in disguise from the past reaction ; its gen- 
uine love of church; its reverence; its appreciation of 
art ; its learning, and with it a deeper appreciation of 
our position as members of the whole Church of God ; 
a more ardent attachment to the living truth of the 
Reformation. 

In that view I sum up this chapter of history. On 
this ground I place this English communion. It is 
not its existence as an establishment, it is not its ex- 
clusive claims or policy that make its history great. 
It is in spite of these that I can see and feel what has 
given it a lasting glory in the past, and is to make it 
yet a leader in the van of Christendom. Rome has 
produced great scholastics, glowing preachers, men of 
high ascetic devotion. Lutheranism has its profound 
learning ; Calvinism its polemic divines, its iron cham- 
pions. The Church of England has alone had such 
varied minds as a Hooker and a Leighton, a Cud- 
worth and a Butler, a Tillotson and a Liddon, an Ar- 
nold, a Coleridge, and a Robertson. There are none 
more eminent in the whole range of practical divinity. 
There are none so admirable as reasonable defenders 
of the faith. In this above them all I find a compre- 
hensive wisdom ; a Christian literature rich in the 



136 Epochs in Church History, 

whole range of ethics and devotion ; a piety which 
blends true feeling with the graces of the household ; 
and the virtues of a national life. And such has been 
its influence to shape the soberest and most symmet- 
rical Christian character. Noble Church ! We love 
it as our mother. We prize its fair worship, its set- 
tled order, its wise training ; we prize all the memo- 
ries of its past, and keep them as our undying heri- 
tage. Never shall I believe that a Church which has 
begotten a Latimer and a Ridley, a champion of 
sound faith like Chillingworth, thinkers like Butler 
and More, saints like Herbert and Heber, is to be 
untrue to its great destinies. 

That is my closing thought. I hold that such a 
Church has a work to do beyond itself. This I believe 
to be the result of all its life and all its experience, to 
teach it its true Catholicity. It has been and is a 
growth toward the fulfilment of the principle which 
lies in its structure. That end has been thwarted by 
its own defects ; it is to be nobly won. It has yet 
struggles before it. I do not seek to predict what may 
be the outcome of its State establishment. If it shall 
die at last, I am glad to believe it will only be when it 
is ready for the result. It has to-day learned its true 
hold on the nation, the hold of a real activity and gen- 
erous life. For this alone I would keep it. I can see 
that its worst enemy is the ecclesiastical party, which 
hates the State, as it once loved it, because it will not 



The English Church. 137 

foster its own designs. But whatever the future in 
this regard, I have no fears for the end. I believe 
with all the fulness of a conviction, which no quarrels 
of the hour can shake, in the work God has given such 
a Church to do in this age. Never since the Refor- 
mation has there been a time when all the divided 
bodies of the continent were more yearning after 
union. It is no arrogant pretension that can bring it. 
It is no unity which would absorb them into an An- 
glican body, with its prelates and prayer-book. It is 
no dream of a universal Episcopate. Let us anchor 
ourselves to some ecclesiastical theory, let us turn 
away from that Protestant Christianity which needs 
to-day more than ever a united front, and the Church 
of England will not only lose, as too often before, its 
best opportunity, but it must drift at last into the 
Dead Sea of a barren isolation. But let it be true to 
its own original design ; let it be the Church that 
unites at once its love of the Christian past with the 
life of the present ; that shall teach at once historic 
order, yet the same Protestant freedom that nerved its 
elder heroes and martyrs, and it shall yet be the leader 
of a broken Christendom into unity. 



THE CHURCH OF AMERICA. 

What is to be the religious character of America ? It 
is the question which lifts itself on the horizon to- 
day, above even the grave social and political issues 
that weigh on the statesman. For it is indeed one 
problem ; that of our Christian civilization. We 
share the hopes and fears of all who believe in the 
principles of our great Commonwealth. A century has 
just passed over our history ; and within that space of 
time has grown this marvellous life of a continent, nor 
can we, while we indulge in none of the vain-glorious 
dreams of our destiny, doubt that the God who 
opened this new world to us, designs to make it the 
field of a great future. Yet a century is but the long 
life of a man, and the infancy of a nation. It is not 
the Genesis of this Republic, but its Exodus, which 
should concern us. It is folly for us to forget that 
our lasting life must depend on the education of the 
national character ; the formation of those laws of self- 
governed intelligence, of Christian faith and virtuous 
habits, which more than in all other forms of social 
policy are needed for a republican people. 

In this light it is that the Christian character of our 

138 



The Church of America. 139 

American civilization meets us. In this light I wish to 
dwell on it. For it takes indeed colossal proportions, 
as we consider what are the elements entering to-day 
into the subject. There has never been, since the day 
when barbarous Europe was won by the Christian 
Church, any parallel. It is, as then, the problem of a 
new formation, the fusion of all races, and languages ; 
the intelligence and the refuse of Europe ; Protestant 
and Roman Catholic, all to be shaped into a national 
growth. Yet it is as plain that, with this likeness, 
there is an entire difference in the conditions of the 
growth. The savage hordes of the olden world were 
won in a time when the Latin Church was the possess- 
or of letters and religious life ; and thus the religion 
of Europe took first a feudal, then a national form, 
Our emigrants of every sort bring the ideas of their 
old-world civilization into a new, where no hierarchy 
can shape them, no National Church educate them. 
With this greater freedom of development, the result 
must depend on more varied influences, alike good 
and evil. 

Such is the problem. I do not look on it with fear, 
as many do. I cannot share, either in a political or 
religious view, that unbelief in human progress under 
God's guidance, which leads us to look back to Euro- 
pean forms of government in State or Church as the 
remedy for our dangers. We may be far from the 
promised land, but it is not wisdom or courage to 



140 Epochs in Church History. 

groan for the flesh-pots of Egypt. Indeed I should be 
faithless to every lesson of history, did I not hold that 
God in His Providence is shaping here a new and 
larger formation of Christianity than from any of the 
former moulds. Nor can I have the feeling of those 
in our communion who are looking forward to a time 
when this or any other shall become THE American 
Church. Rather I hold that it should be our duty, as 
Christian observers, to study the real forces that must 
enter into such a growth ; and so understand in a large 
and comprehensive spirit our work for the general 
welfare. In no sectarian spirit, therefore, but with 
the freest expression as to our aims, our duties and our 
dangers, I wish to consider this subject. I would do 
full justice to all Christian men, of every name, labor- 
ing in the same great field. Yet because I am address- 
ing members of my own communion, I shall especially 
direct my view to our own history. We are, from 
causes that I shall fully set forth, in a state where it 
will depend on ourselves whether we sink back to 
a narrow Church deposit, or whether we undertake 
aright the task God has given us in our land and time. 
I shall, then, speak first of the religious influences 
which have shaped America thus far, and of our own 
Church in connection with them. It is a strange, 
mingled history. Who of those sturdy Protestants, of 
the Protestants that came here to found their king- 
dom of God, could ever have dreamed that a Roman 



The Church in America. 141 

Church would in a century have become a political 
and religious power, a fowl of the air lodging under the 
shadow of this great tree of republican liberty? The 
early religion began with the colonial variety of Prot- 
estantism, and with a few Romanists, whose influence 
was very slight before the late day of Irish emigration. 
The Puritan of New England and the Presbyterian of 
the Middle and Southern States were its strongest 
elements. Other less powerful sects had their home 
among us. In Pennsylvania, especially, the Moravian 
had established his primitive community, and the fol- 
lower of Fox, the teacher of the Gospel of love and 
peace, had founded his city of brotherly love. Our 
own Church had flourished in Virginia and the Caroli- 
nas; but, with the exception of a few cities like New 
York, it was comparatively an exotic, without much 
religious power in a land whose colonists remembered 
too well the tyranny of England. The most influen- 
tial body, therefore, both Independent and Presbyte- 
rian, was of Calvinist type. It had with it the heroic 
elements of a Protestantism nursed in the long battles 
of the past. It had, too, that love of learning which 
ennobled those thinking men, and early showed itself 
in the foundation of college and school. I render 
gratefully, as a son of New England, this high rank to 
the religion which, beyond all other forces, shaped the 
mental and moral character of a self-governed repub- 
lic ; and I believe, in spite of all defects, it was the 



142 Epochs in Church History. 

pioneer of Providence in our early history. But it 
had, also, the inherent characteristics of that stern 
theology. The Puritan sought to build another the- 
ocracy, in later types, on this new soil. Church and 
State with him were one ; but it was no State-Church, 
it was a Church-State, which he borrowed from the 
Old Testament. Tolerance was «no virtue of that 
time. The Baptist was its only teacher among the 
offshoots of Calvinism ; and to him we ought to give 
all honor for the example of Roger Williams. 

Such were the beginnings of religion in America. 
It is toward the close of our colonial age we see the 
rise of the body, planted by Wesley on our soil, which 
by its popular character won to itself so vast a relig- 
ious realm. That influence did much to temper the 
dogmatic harshness of evangelical faith ; its Arminian 
ideas, combined with its fervid piety, gave a different 
tone to the religion of the masses, while at the same 
time much of the irregular and half educated Chris- 
tianity of our land has been owing to its revival sys- 
tem. All these seeds were sown in the quick soil of 
America. But we may safely say that there was little 
of the peculiar character of our modern Christianity 
till after we had passed the crisis of our national birth. 

Here, then, we enter more directly into the causes 
which have led to the growth of our own communion. 
I shall dwell on them especially, because I wish to 
show how a true historic sketch at once gives us a 



The Church of America. 143 

view of what constitutes our real power, and destroys 
some of the illusions so often indulged in by our 
Churchmen of the ecclesiastical type. Nothing is 
more intelligible to one who studies American his- 
tory, than the increase of our Church. I have said 
that during the colonial time it was little more than 
an exotic. And it was not until after it had learned 
by a hard lesson to sever itself from English ideas 
and become American, that it grew at all. The Rev- 
olution tried it sorely. Many of its loyal clergy and 
laity, who had repeated, " Fear God and honor the 
king," had been bitter foes of the Republic. It was 
the crisis of life and death. It was owing to the sober 
wisdom of the leaders that it survived the trial. It 
came forth a weak, yet organized Body. And from 
that germ, those three Bishops and two hundred 
clergy, it has become, by a swift and unexampled 
growth, the Body we see to-day, its dioceses planted 
in every State, representing so much of the wealth, 
the culture, the piety of the land. What have been 
the sources of this power? 

The secret lies in the changes of our American civil- 
ization. It was natural that, after the Revolution, 
there should be a larger growth of religious liberty. 
It had on one hand its evil side. The deism of Eng- 
land, which afterward bore its fruit in France, had 
spread, through popular writers like Paine, far more 
than we are wont to think. But it had, too, its neces- 



144 Epochs in CJiurch History. 

sary and just side. There had come a natural revolt 
against the dogmatic severity of the religion which 
had grown in the Calvinistic churches. Political free- 
dom joined with religious freedom against the hier- 
archy which made the membership of the Church the 
condition of the office in the State, and imposed dis- 
abilities on all other religious bodies as sternly as 
Laud had done. The Episcopal Church had marked 
attractions. It was Protestant. No divines of that 
day had discovered that Protestantism was " a fail- 
ure." But more than this, I beg you especially to 
notice its character at that time. It was its happy 
fortune to be born at that period in the history of the 
English communion when, notwithstanding the State 
policy, and the partial decay of spiritual life, there 
was perhaps more of a plain, strong sense, a practical 
religion than in any other. Such men as Bishop 
White were its best models. They were not mere 
ecclesiastics. As yet no Oxford movement had de- 
veloped any theory of Episcopal absolutism. They 
were attached to their own communion, but they 
loved it for its real features of faith and orderly 
growth. It was thus the Episcopal Church appealed 
to many in the growing community. At home it rep- 
resented tyranny over dissenters ; here freedom from 
another tyranny. It was, first of all, simple and liberal 
in its doctrinal standards. The narrow theology of 
that time had reached its most metaphysical excess 



The Church of America. 145 

among the Independents of New England, and the 
Presbyterians in other States. There is no more striking 
parallel in religious history than between the scholas- 
tic age of the Latin Church and that of New England. 
It had its completeness when Edwards's " Treatise on 
the Will," based on the philosophy of Locke, taught 
necessity as the Christian gospel. For fifty years the 
pulpit was the gladiatorial arena of keen minds like 
Bellamy and Emmons, and the problems of physical 
and moral ability were the meat of the people. But, 
as in the Latin Church, the intellect trained in this 
athletic game, overthrew at last the dogmatic school 
which bore it. Arminianism first came as a protest 
against the harsh thunders and unloving subtleties of 
the pulpit. It was not till later that Unitarianism 
appeared ; it grew earlier in the milder form of Semi- 
Arian doubt. The doctrines of the Incarnation and 
the Atonement had been made metaphysical notions, 
and many men of culture and of piety were by degrees 
drifted into denial, because the theology of New Eng- 
land was to them the only orthodoxy. I speak very 
plainly my view of this. It is sheer ignorance to talk 
as if the rise of scholars like Ware and Channing came 
from a cold scepticism. Unitarianism on its negative 
side was an honest reaction against a one-sided theol- 
ogy. It was when it came to state its positive faith 
that it found it had nothing to state. It was, then, 
as the teacher of a plainer Gospel that the Episcopal 
7 



146 Epochs in ChurcJi History. 

Church gained large acceptance. Its orthodoxy was 
undoubted, yet it had always embraced in its large 
limits Calvinist and Arminian, because it had made 
these questions of speculative theology secondary. 
Instead of a Westminster Catechism it asked of its 
worshippers the Apostles' Creed, as the rule of faith. 
And such was the whole tenor of its teaching. The 
pulpit gave a spiritual food ; it did not shut itself up 
in expository quarrels over St. Paul's " hard things," 
but leaned rather to the practical precepts of duty. 
This was unquestionably a grand power. It has drawn 
more perplexed souls into this communion than all 
reasons beside. It is the power of the simple Creed 
to-day. And we shall do well to understand it now, 
when, instead of this living idea, we are told by our 
Church divines of the highest school that Catholic 
truth consists in their scholastic theories of sacra- 
mental grace, and hyperphysical presence. They have 
exactly reversed the position. They teach now the 
very metaphysical Christianity which makes the Bible 
a harder riddle than the Calvinist has done. But 
another element of growth was its constitutional order ; 
I have always thought it the happy inspiration of a 
statesman, which led our Church Fathers to model 
their system so nearly after the federative plan of the 
republic. It was and has always been one of its vis- 
ible arguments. The Independent, undoubtedly, de- 
veloped a self-governed freedom. But it had too 



The Church of America, 147 

much of a pure democracy, without checks and bal- 
ances; and its result was too often worse tyranny. 
The ancient Mathers ruled as Archbishops, but when 
the clerical prestige was past, the tendency was the 
other way, to make the minister a hireling. Men were 
tired of a religious liberty that led to so much quarrel 
between minister and deacons and elders, split par- 
ishes, crippled all organized harmony. The Presby- 
terian kept too much of the clerical aristocracy. The 
Methodist could not meet the wants of a parochial and 
settled ministry. In the Episcopal Church all members 
were under one general law, their mutual rights and 
functions adjusted by written statute. But we must 
especially beware not to confound this influence of our 
constitutional order with any extreme or exclusive 
notions of an Episcopacy. There can be no wiser or 
weightier lesson than we may learn by comparing the 
recorded ideas of our Church leaders of that early 
time with the arrogance of many to-day. There are 
here two points which I must specially recall. The 
first is the sober emphasis with which the claim of 
Episcopal government was defended. There was set 
forth in the convention of August, 1783, "a declara- 
tion of certain fundamental rights and liberties of the 
Protestant Episcopal Church in Maryland," wherein 
the third article reads thus : " Without calling in 
question the rights, modes, and forms of any other 
Christian churches or societies, or wishing the least 



148 Epochs in Church History. 

contest with them on that subject, we declare it an 
essential right of the said Protestant Episcopal Church 
to have and enjoy a continuance of the said three 
orders of ministers forever, so far as concerns matters 
purely spiritual." This was the simple position of the 
Church of England, as I proved before, until the time 
of Laud. The historic claim of the Episcopate, as from 
primitive time kept in the Body, and therefore kept 
by the national body of England, as wise, constitu- 
tional, useful, a bond of unity and continuity, yet not 
as any absolute dogma, unchurching others, or deny- 
ing their valid ministry ; this is the Church principle 
of the Reformation. Undoubtedly there were those 
then whp held more exclusive views. The personal 
energy of Seabury did much to impress his higher 
views on Connecticut, and the earlier converts, like 
Johnson, were won by their doubts of ordination ; but 
it was an exception to the rule. It is an absurdity to 
think that any theory of an Apostolic Succession of 
this exclusive sort has aught to do with the just influ- 
ence of the Church. Such a claim, excluding a vast 
body of good and noble men, would have killed its 
growth, as it leaves it now high and dry on the barren 
shore. Our constitutional order is the power of this 
Church. We maintain all the historic weight of the 
Episcopal office, but it is only one part in the govern- 
ment of the Body. And here another feature of the 
early record is deserving of special note. The partici- 



The Church of America. 149 

pation of the laity in our legislation was settled by the 
same men. At the time when they earnestly asked the 
Episcopate from England, it was much feared by the 
Archbishop of Canterbury and others that the demo- 
cratic character of the new country might lead to in- 
trusion on clerical privileges. It is very interest- 
ing to read the clear replies from the American 
Churchmen. They insisted on lay representation. 
They upheld it as of Scriptural, primitive use ; and 
furthermore as a feature without which no church could 
grow in America. In this spirit their ecclesiastical 
government was conformed as nearly as possible to 
the national type. The representative idea was em- 
bodied in it. Its power was vested in a constitutional 
body whose two houses embraced clergy and laity. 
No arbitrary or unwritten prerogative was given to its 
bishops. It has been objected that in this one feature, 
which makes our House of Bishops a separate and 
permanent body in convention, we have what is incon- 
sistent with our constitutional system, and nearer to 
the English House of Lords. We may not, perhaps, 
avoid it ; and we have, as the Parliament has done, 
hedged it with so much restriction that the balance is 
preserved. But it is only fair to say that the objec- 
tion made to it on this ground by critics out of our 
Church as so far not representative is a valid one. 

Last of all, I name as the source of its influence, its 
common worship. It had been from a natural reac- 



150 Epochs in Church History. 

tion that the Puritan, the iconoclast of England, 
threw away the Prayer-book with the Romanism 
which had overlaid it ; but it was not long before the 
barrenness of their worship, the substitution of sub- 
jective piety for the practical methods of Christian 
growth, an element which became dominant after the 
time of Whitgift, were largely felt. The simplicity, 
the devoutness, the good taste of the Prayer-book, 
were in harmony with the reverent feeling of many. 
It gave their religion a personal bond. All wants were 
met in it ; the orderly selections from the Word of 
God, the stately chants, the seasons that recalled the 
life of Christ, the responsive prayers, were a living 
structure. More than this, the sober character of the 
religion it fostered, was a visible argument. There 
were many who felt that the pulpit had preached too 
much faith which quarrelled with good works, until 
it lost sight of the fruit of a living piety in the graces 
of the household, and the morality of social life. It is 
not strange that this should have given our own com- 
munion a vast influence. It is a shallow view of our 
liturgical system, to think it only nurses " a religion 
of good taste." Doubtless, the love of such forms 
grows with social culture. But it has a deeper source. 
The love of a real religion, of sound methods of Chris- 
tian nurture, is linked with it. Such, I hold, was our 
true power. Yet here, I must remark, how admira- 
ble was the spirit of our Fathers, in contrast with any 



The Church of America. 151 

ritual formalism. They knew that a liturgical wor- 
ship must be adapted to the wants of the time and 
land where it was planted. The Athanasian and 
Nicene Creeds were omitted in the " Proposed Book," 
and the " descent into hell " also ; the alternate phrase 
in the ordination service was inserted, and the Office 
of Visitation for the Sick was purged of its absolving 
sentence. It was by the urgent request of the Eng- 
lish bishops that the Nicene Creed and the " descent " 
were permitted ; but as to the rest, they were insisted 
on. The spirit of these changes may well be recalled, 
to show how much more of an intelligent freedom in- 
spired them than many modern Churchmen. All of 
them were on the side of a generous liberty. The 
Athanasian Creed, it was expressly said, was omitted, 
not from any doubt of its truth as a doctrinal formula, 
but because a metaphysical creed was not suited to 
Church worship. It is a pity, indeed, that the exclusion 
of the very questionable and far from primitive inter- 
polation of the " descent " had not been insisted on also. 
The only change which looked like higher sacramental 
notions, was in the Communion Office, adopted from 
the Scotch liturgy. Yet there is no essential difference 
from the English office, only parts there reserved for 
prayers are here inserted in the Consecration. Enough 
was done to prove that this Church acknowledged no 
mere Anglican or other tradition as its liturgical law. 
Its rule cannot be better stated than in the words of 



152 Epochs in Church History. 

the letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury. They 
wished to " keep whatever was necessary to the faith 
and order of the Church, with such changes as were 
needed for its growth in America." A sober, intelli- 
gent, large principle, worthy to be the monument of 
their wisdom, as it has been the real source of all 
that is genuine in our Church life. There is not one 
trace of the stolid churchmanship, which refuses all 
change, and calls itself conservatism. 

Such, then, I sum all in saying, were the grand 
features of this communion, as it began, and as it 
has enlarged itself to its present proportions. It has 
gained beyond many Protestant bodies, because it has 
united this reverence for a historic and settled Chris- 
tianity with a spiritual life and freedom. Almost all 
its growth has been from those not bred in its own 
household, but won to it by these attractions. Well 
can I remember how in my youth, after years of per- 
plexity amidst the strifes of theological parties, this 
stately fabric of the Church rose before me ; its plain 
historic creed, its rich liturgical structure, its simple 
and reasonable system of Christian education, as a 
living growth, so different from all theories of school 
divinity, took captive my mind, my affections, and my 
whole being. It has been the experience of thou- 
sands. It will be so, so long as the Church is true to 
its own spirit. 

With such a sketch of the past religious history of 



The Church of America. 153 

America we are, I believe, ready for a just under- 
standing of the question as it is. As we look around 
us on the character of Christianity to-day it may seem 
on its surface a motley and disorganized world. Our 
religion is the very picture of our peculiar social 
growth. We see the original communions which 
shaped it in various stages of development. They 
represent a large and positive religious element which 
has by no means lost its influence. But with our Prot- 
estant bodies there have grown also other elements 
not so visible in the past. Our religious freedom has 
given a natural vent to all those varieties of thought 
and activity more repressed in European life. All 
the wild extravagance of sect has had its outlet here. 
Nor only this. There has steadily grown the vast 
body of those who in the division of sect have thrown 
off the restraints of all church organization. We have 
imported here the culture of Europe ; and although 
we have not the same advancement in science and 
letters, the ideas of the older world have entered 
into the mind of the people. In many ways we see 
the formation of unbelief, of a distinct antagonism 
to a settled Christian faith. It has come partly out 
of a decomposition of religious sects. The Unitarian- 
ism of New England has passed into a Naturalism, 
which has frightened its older, more devout believers, 
and led them back to a positive faith, while it has 
borne with it the younger, more advanced generation, 
7* 



154 Epochs in Church History. 

It is the tendency of the so-called liberal Christianity 
to ally itself to-day with the modern school of science 
which rejects all revelation. But, on the other hand, 
we see the strange growth in this land of the Romish 
Church. It has conquered for itself, under the name 
of religious liberty, almost a grander realm than in 
the old world ; and although it came with the most 
ignorant of our emigrants, it has become a political 
and social as well as religious power which holds the 
balance in legislation, threatens our system of popular 
education, and alarms many for the safety of the 
Republic. 

What, then, is the view which as Christian men we 
ought to take of this condition ? It is not at all 
strange that it should call forth all manner of theories 
according to the hopes and fears of men. The disci- 
ple of free religion is looking for the decomposition 
of Christianity in the quick-lime of our soil. The 
Roman priest is expecting a grander empire here. 
The Protestant of this or that denomination is in ter- 
ror of both. And the Churchman is confident his is 
to be the Church of America. I cannot sympathize 
with any such theories. I have no theories to offer, 
but simply what I hold to be the conclusions of our 
history. Let me not be misunderstood as if I did not 
soberly appreciate all the perils of our American 
world ; as if either in its political or religious aspects 
I were such a smiling optimist as to forget that its 



The Church of America. 155 

destiny depends on the maintenance of faith, of order, 
of Christian law. But it is because we can read in 
this history the proofs of a divine and guiding power 
in the past that I would study it to-day. 

I have already said that in Europe the growth of 
Christianity has been bound up with the whole social 
history of the world ; and thus its national and re- 
ligious life have wrought together for the result. I 
have shown that here the entirely differing conditions 
of the growth were the Providential signs of a newer 
and larger result, as well in its social as its Christian 
character. I cannot, then, believe that there is to be 
any one body which shall absorb into itself all the 
religious life. The cure of unbelief on one side, and 
Romanism on the other, will be by the cultivation of 
sound learning; by the promotion of a religious life, 
which shall, by degrees, bring our denominations out 
from their rival systems into the unity of a simple 
Apostolic faith and order. But that process is one 
which must go forward by true growth, in this free 
social atmosphere. As in that guiding light I regard 
the present, I can see, in the first place, nothing 
strange or perplexing in our past growth. There is 
no reason why we should doubt that the religion of 
Christ has as strong a hold on the convictions of the 
people, as it has abroad. I believe it has a stronger 
hold. I believe that there is less with us of the de- 
veloped unbelief, to-day seen so largely in the Old 



156 Epochs in Church History. 

World ; and that because the causes that produced 
it abroad, the oppression of the State Churches, the 
despotism of a Latin hierarchy, are not known among 
us. Much as I deplore the rivalry of sects, and the 
excess of our " unchartered freedom," I hold that this 
experiment of freedom has more than compensated 
by this result. I say it again, and with emphasis, 
we are, compared with the Europe of to-day, a more 
religious people. And, if we believe that the truth 
of Christ is divine, is victorious over error, we surely 
ought not to think that such freedom will be other 
in the end than the way of its nobler success. 

But this brings me to the next point, that we are to 
look for the true method of our Christian action in 
the forces which only can bring such a result. This 
America of ours wants a settled faith ; it wants the 
organized order of the Church. But to achieve it we 
must find the soil in the character of the people and 
the law of its growth. It is very plain then, or ought 
to be, that any who dream of imposing on it a de- 
velopment such as grew in Europe out of its differ- 
ing conditions of national or religious life, are only 
dreamers. This soil will never produce a hierarchy 
which can sway it. I think we should soberly weigh 
the " Roman question." It is strange how many fear- 
ful souls are talking of the influence of Rome, as, per- 
haps, the dominant religion, because of its centralized 
strength. Yet they should see that its growth has 



The Church of America. 157 

been, and is, from special causes, from the influx of 
Irish emigration, the political demagogism in our 
great cities, and the machinery of its leaders. But it 
lias no roots in the national soil. It was plain, in our 
great civil strife, that it worked for its own selfish 
ends alone. I do not doubt that we have stern bat- 
tles to fight with it. I would not lean, then, with care- 
less trust on our institutions. I would resist that 
Church to the death, in every effort to control our 
school system. If it once gain there the temporary 
triumph, it may put back the social growth, which 
alone can master it as a disturbing element, for a gen- 
eration to come. Our hope is in the power of educa- 
tion, at last, to make its ignorant devotees intelligent 
members of the Commonwealth. If we secure this, 
we may safely leave to time the sure struggle with its 
selfish hierarchy. It will grow in its peculiar way. 
It has the right of just liberty. But, if it will not 
yield to the law of the social commonwealth, it will 
reach by and by the point where the last battle will 
sweep it into its grave. No hierarchy of any type 
will be usurper over this free land. 

But if such be our trust in regard to this issue of 
our time it must surely teach us the principles of our 
Christian faith, and aim as they bear on ourselves. I 
repeat that no one church and no one system can ever 
expect to shape the religious life of this country. It 
must be a growth, as nowhere else, of manifold ele- 



158 Epochs in Church History. 

ments. And do I mean by this that there is no such 
thing as a positive Christianity ; that we are to remain 
a chaos of sect ? God forbid ! I believe there are 
certain foundation truths on which the Church rests ; 
and that all divisions have arisen because our one- 
sided systems of doctrine or polity have led us away 
from them. But I will not confound this Catholicity 
with any that either interprets the Apostles' Creed by 
the Westminster Confession, or the historic order of 
the Church by the theory of an exclusive Episcopal 
ministry. It is precisely my faith that more than in 
Europe our religious freedom of development will lead 
to a friendly inquiry into the common ground on 
which our Protestant Christianity should rest. And 
if I be told that we are as a people the most averse 
from such historic ideas, I answer that I cannot think 
so. We have naturally in political or social life sev- 
ered ourselves from the despotism of past types ; but 
it is only to find at last, as we grow older and wiser, 
our true historic growth. But I am not reasoning of 
abstract hopes. Amidst all the wild growths of relig- 
ious liberty here there is this real and sober progress 
already. As I look at the position of almost all the 
great Protestant bodies of this land nothing is more 
striking than their inward growth. Few pulpits preach 
the harsh Calvinism of former days ; a moderate the- 
ology has brought them together. The one-sided 
tendency of their worship has been modified ; there is 



The Church of America. 159 

a disposition toward those features of our own Church 
once held to be suspicious, a liturgical worship and 
sacred art. It is amusing to hear some of our clergy 
still firing their rusty guns at the doctrine of election 
or limited atonement, as if they imagined they were 
taught to-day. This growth has come from the sound 
progress of a Christian learning, and from a common 
labor in this great field of Christian action. The two 
great bodies of Presbyterians, after a half century of 
quarrel, have come together. Liberal thinkers, like 
Albert Barnes and Bushnell, once tried for heresy, are 
among the leaders of their faith. The Union Theo- 
logical Seminary, as well as others, are graced by 
many of its best scholars in every field. Baptist and 
Methodist, once classed among the decriers of learn- 
ing, have had the same growth. Their religious re- 
views, their contributions to Christian literature, are 
noble. We see no longer the want of order, of reve- 
rent worship, once charged on them. I rejoice in it. 
I should be untrue to every idea of Christian history 
if I did not. And here I believe is to be our hope 
also in the struggle with all the adverse forces of an 
unchristian science or social culture. Whatever Church 
of Christ leads the van in the teaching of the simple, 
living faith, in the promotion of a genuine science, in 
the real work of a Christian benevolence, will be fore- 
most in its influence on our American life. 

And here, then, is the place, where I can and will 



160 Epochs in Church History. 

speak my honest convictions, as they concern the wel- 
fare of our own great communion. Pardon me, if I 
hide nothing. I have shown already what were the 
true sources of our growth in this America in the ear- 
lier days ; that noble character, as a Church, holding 
its plain creed, its constitutional law, its fair worship, 
its practical system was the secret of it all. And I 
have now to say, that within these forty years we have 
lost much of that power. It has come in part from 
the rise among us of that Anglican reaction, held by 
so many to be the exponent of Church principles. But 
while I see and deplore this influx of opinions, which 
have ended in an advanced Ritualistic movement, I am 
constrained to believe that the cause lies deeper. I 
hold that such views have been largely owing to the 
tendency of a body like ours, whose dominant spirit is 
over-conservatism, to feed the ecclesiastic spirit. Ritu- 
alism, to my mind, is not our chief peril. It is a fashion 
that passeth away. Its error lies in ideas, not costume ; 
it lies in the substitution of the principles of a hierarchy 
for the true historic view of the Church. We have tried 
to adopt the theory of a Church infallibility instead of a 
simple creed ; an exclusive Episcopal ministry instead 
of an historic order ; a system of sacramental grace and 
priestly authority instead of the practical Church views 
of other days. And this, I repeat, is no sudden trans- 
formation. It has been a growth. The spirit of our 
Church has been, under the guise of order, to check the 



The Church of America. 161 

spiritual life, which only can keep the body free from 
its natural diseases. The one illusion, which has car- 
ried away even our sound-hearted Churchmen, who do 
not believe in any extravagance, has been this, that 
we are to be the Church of America, which shall absorb 
all others in its organization. That dream has led 
them to identify its real elements of constitutional 
law with an exclusive Episcopate, of orderly worship 
with our Prayer Book, to make the ministry the pivot 
of the Church. They have believed that the world 
was waiting to be adopted by our communion. They 
could not see that this was only a milder type of the 
Romanist monomania; and this has stiffened our 
policy. Both parties have shared it in different fash- 
ion ; both have been absorbed in the same idea ; that 
our safety amidst the rushing tides was to live in our 
little light-house. The main purpose of our Church in 
this land of freedom, has been to stand aloof from 
sect ; we have not until lately begun to learn that we 
have other and more fatal vices to fear. Our legisla- 
tion has admitted little of needful reform. We have 
done much practical work in laying out our dioceses 
and improving organization. But well-nigh every 
canon has been for restriction not for generous al- 
lowance. A changeless uniformity has been our prin- 
ciple of unity ; at times noble efforts have been made 
and failed. Within my experience two such movements 
have been signal examples of this spirit. The memo- 



1 62 Epochs in Church History. 

rial of 1853 sought only a little flexibility in our rou- 
tine of service ; but while, to the honor of our Bish- 
ops be it said, they were on the side of wise adaptation, 
it was lost by the general opposition ; and that, too, 
of both great parties. The Baptismal controversy has 
been another. Our great body could not, for the sake 
of keeping within it some of its most earnest and con- 
scientious clergy, grant even the change of a few words 
of a rubric involving no loss of any essential truth. Only 
of late have we allowed any modification, even for 
mission work among the Germans or Italians. This 
temper has led to one-sidedness; has punished the 
invasion of a parish boundary line, while they who 
would turn its worship into a toy-shop have been 
quietly allowed to work for their own aims. Its ad- 
vance has been signal in architecture and in ritual ; 
but it has not kept pace in the education of its min- 
istry with other bodies, whom it scornfully calls dis- 
senters. There has been a steady tendency, to copy 
the Anglican model, instead of the simple Apostolic 
commonwealth, our true glory and our power; and we 
are dreaming of recasting the antique provincial sys- 
tem ; metropolitan, deans, chapters of the Cathedral 
Church. There are some among us who are desirous 
to put our Church into alliance with the sees of Can- 
terbury and York. I rejoice that the good sense of 
our convention has checked that movement. We are 
no more in a Pan-Anglican Church, than in a Pan- 



The Church of America. 163 

Anglican political system. It is to narrow our real 
Catholicity, as well as to lose our autonomy to think it. 
We have been drifting away from our true position into 
this ecclesiastical Dead Sea. I repeat it, for I knew its 
truth ; boast as we please, we do not stand to-day as we 
did thirty years ago in the eyes of the intelligent men 
of America, as the communion to which they look for 
a large and noble unity amidst confusions, but rather 
as an arrogant sect. Other communions have been ad- 
vancing in generous growth : we have been going back- 
ward. In my youth the best brain and piety of the 
Protestant sects were looking toward our ministry. It 
is not so now. With rare exceptions we get only 
their waifs and strays, their lesser men, who want 
ordination to hide their lack of all else, and who be- 
come our advanced Churchmen. 

I repeat it, it is folly to hide these facts. It is not 
loyalty to say that this Church is what it was because 
it uses the same service-book, or to think that silence 
will save discord. We have to thank ourselves for the 
surprise which has taken place in the formation of the 
Reformed Church. It was, as I hold it, a lamentable 
mistake. I regard it as an act of desertion to leave 
this noble body in the midst of its battle. What good 
in creating another bisected Christianity? What folly 
to expect a Church exempt from the vices and antag- 
onisms of every such division! I will not judge their 
consciences, or repeat the foolish charge of schism. I 



164 Epochs in Church History, 

will only say, that it was no act of ripe wisdom or 
true courage. But it is blindness to forget that it 
came from our own defects ; and it will be greater 
blindness if, in our dislike or dread of that result, we 
do not learn the lesson it is to teach us. The truth 
for us to know is, that we have this battle to fight out 
within the Church; that we are contending, not for 
radical principles, but for sound Church principles. 

And such, I hold, is to be the result of this strug- 
gle. It is a necessary one. It will teach us what our 
work is as a living Church of Christ in this fair land. 
We have a noble heritage and a noble opportunity. 
We have this comprehensive faith ; we have a sym- 
metrical worship ; we have a constitutional order ; we 
have a practical system of organized life. In these we 
are superior to any and to all around us ; we are free 
from the hindrances, theological and actual, which en- 
cumber them. We can speak, as few others can, the 
truth and the law needed for our land and time. We 
cannot be the Church of America. But if, without selfish 
ambition, without that aggressive policy, which some 
of our Churchmen prate of, and which is the very soul 
of all sectism, we feel that we are simply toiling to 
advance Christ's Kingdom, that we are only wit- 
nesses in the truth we hold, to one Church, larger 
than any part of it. If we depend on our growth in a 
better learning, in a generous action ; if we strive to 
make our worship flexible and catholic ; if we allow a 



The Church of America. 165 

spirit of wise reform in our methods alike of worship 
and Church organization, we can and may become the 
noblest of all churches. But it will come no other 
way. It is a fatal churchmanship that thinks we can 
win any lasting results here save by this growth. Our 
claims of an exclusive ministry, our imitations of 
Anglican or early Anglican costume will not ripen in 
this soil. They may create their little circle of 
devotees, but the manly thought, the active strength 
of the nation will be lost to us. Our Episcopate 
must be seen to be no needless ornament ; not the 
queen bee of the hive to keep up the succession, but 
the most active in work, and the least active in self- 
seeking. Our clergy must be no caste, who can be in- 
ferior in all else because valid in imposition of hands, 
but must be abreast with the culture of their time. If 
we feel this spirit it will make us prize our gifts as a 
historic Church, not because they sever us from others, 
but because they give us the generous desire of unity. 
Such, I conclude, is our place and labor. Is it a 
dream ? At times when I look on the confusions and 
follies of the hour, I am tempted to despair. But 
when I look beneath these at the capacities of life in 
our whole faith and worship, when I recall the heroes 
and sages of the Reformation, when I reflect on our 
own past, and all it has bequeathed us of wisdom and 
goodness, then I rise in unquenched hope that God 
will not allow us to be dwarfed and shrunken into a 



1 66 Epochs in Church History. 

small hierarchy, but may make us at last equal to our 
divine opportunities. Yes. I thank Him that here I 
can speak with faith. I can reach calmer and better con- 
clusions than many of my Evangelical brethren, because 
I read history with other eyes. I find here no strife of 
unchangeable doctrine between two parties, but I 
see here as I see in the Church of England the crises 
through which we are passing to our riper conviction. 
Thirty or forty years are but a point in Church life- 
Its end will be to prove not alone the folly of our Rit- 
ualists, but the untenableness of the Church system 
which gave them birth. The strife will be fought 
out by the learning, the experimental logic of these 
years, and the party which has staked its life on the 
battle will not rise again. Yes, it is well worth fight- 
ing for. We will not outlaw ourselves, but will 
maintain this Church against its usurpers. There is 
coming forth from the best minds of the old parties 
a newer generation who will combine with the 
clear knowledge of the historic features of this com- 
munion its evangelical life ; a better love of its order, 
its worship, its Christian art, and with it a true free- 
dom. Let us only put away dead issues, put away 
the violence of parties, the weapons of denunciation, 
and the fatal noil quieta movere, the policy of the 
barnacle on the ship's bottom, not of the seaman ; let 
us work for the positive aims of the time, to build up 
a sound education, to study fairly the history of the 



The Church of America. 167 

past, to promote a comprehensive legislation, to con- 
vince those who are seeking a Church of Christ that it 
is to be found in no Nicene theories, but in these 
sober principles. 

Is it a dream ? If so, let me live and die a dreamer. 
But it is not so. We are sailing along the broad ocean 
of our history, nor can we see beyond the horizon that 
lifts itself to each age on the great circle of the unknown 
Providence ; yet we believe in Him who holds the 
waters in the hollow of His hand, and if at whiles the 
sun does not escape the eclipse, the needle still points 
to the pole. If this Church fail in its high mission, if it 
be wrecked on the sunken rocks of its ambition, or 
cast far up on the barren beach of its indolence, we 
know that the Church of God abides forever. 



THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE. 

It is impossible for any who believe in the unity 
and progress of the race, above all who believe in 
that idea of a Divine guidance in human history 
which is the faith of Christianity, not to have some 
thought as to the character of the future lying be- 
yond the present age of crude civilization. If there 
be a purpose in the life and growth of the race, if the 
centuries of the past be not a play of blind forces, we 
must look forward to some (fvvreXeia of the world. 
We cannot think that all the strifes of social and re- 
ligious thought, the struggles of humanity after truth, 
virtue, order, shall have no result. Even Auguste 
Comte, while he saw no God in the world, was forced 
by the needs of his moral nature to create that Supreme 
Being which he personified as Humanity, and to pre- 
dict for the race an immortality he denied to the 
personal man. But, while we build our ideal, Chris- 
tian or un-Christian, of some perfect age, we must re- 
member that the knowledge of the past is the only sure 
prophecy of the future. All our dreamers, from the 
earlier Messianic vision of a millennial reign of the 
saints to the elect of the new Church of Comte, have 

woven their faith out of a speculative fancy. 

168 



The Church of the Future. 169 

It is quite another task I have set for myself 
in this last lecture. My warmest belief is in a nobler 
age, which shall fulfil the unity of Christian history. 
It would be, indeed, a most imperfect view of so great 
a subject, if I should dismiss it without some sober 
thought, some confirming hope of the results of those 
movements in our own period which I have por- 
trayed. I believe in that Church of the Future, to 
which the noble Bunsen has given its inspiring name. 
But, I am most anxious to separate my ideas, at the 
outset, from any theoretical notions, so often min- 
gled with that subject. My aim will be strictly to 
sum up the historic facts we have already gained, 
and to learn what clear light the past of Christendom 
throws on the untried problem of the next age. 

It is, then, I observe at the outset, the real and rea- 
sonable conclusion which this study of the unity of 
Christian history gives us, that it enables us to follow 
its laws by mere intuition from the beginning to the 
end. Let me state the one guiding principle, which 
has been verified by our historic process. The reve- 
lation of Christ has been seen to be in its origin a 
divine yet human fact, based on the fullest concep- 
tion of the nature and destiny of the race on earth, 
and in its growth as a religion knit with the growing 
stages of human civilization. It declared at its open- 
ing its design of the social regeneration of man as the 
household of God. Each period in the eighteen hun- 



170 Epochs in Church History. 

dred years has seen its unceasing union with the ad- 
vance of that part of the solid body to which has been 
intrusted the supremacy in knowledge, art, social 
order. The history of the Church has always been 
abreast with the larger history of civilized Christen- 
dom. Each age of the Church, in its intellectual and 
moral struggles, has corresponded with the movement 
of the whole. Each, from the earliest Greek age, 
through the Latin, to the Reformation, has left its 
lasting impress. There has been, in spite of all the 
theological or ecclesiastical strifes, the errors, vices, 
and decays, no evil which was not the natural condi- 
tion of its social growth, traceable beyond the Church 
to the historic growth of society itself. There has 
been, from first to last, on the other hand, an essen- 
tial, abiding law of development, by which each suc- 
cessive period has taken the solid results of that be- 
fore it, and entered anew on its larger career. Chris- 
tian history, in a word, from the beginning till now, 
has been the record of a religion for mankind. 

And, therefore, as we have claimed in this historic 
fact its essential difference from all other religions of 
the world, its divine character in its universal fitness 
for humanity, so we claim that it cannot pass away 
before its work is done ; and as that work is coeval 
with the regeneration of the race, its life is coeval 
with the race. Such, I hold, is the reasonable faith of 
the Christian thinker. If in this light we study the 



The Church of the Future. 171 

phenomena of our own time, we shall see, instead of 
those symptoms of decay, which our modern prophets 
of the school of Buckle or Comte call the death of 
Christianity and the birth of a new religion of hu- 
manity, the very vigor of its undying life. This is the 
method in which I propose to study this larger prob- 
lem. I wish to examine clearly the condition of Chris- 
tendom as it is, the factors that enter into the reckon- 
ing, and the historic processes that shall work out the 
future. 

As we survey, then, our modern Christendom, we 
see in it a vast, but broken body, which bears on it the 
marks of the mighty strife not yet ended since the Ref- 
ormation. We see the Latin Church, still keeping its 
ecclesiastic power over Southern Europe, and even more 
vigorous in its wide-spread colonies. We see the Greek 
Church, everywhere decayed save in Russia, where it 
represents a national faith, strong but almost wholly 
apart from the ideas or activities of civilized Europe. 
We see the Protestant churches, still divided by their 
various confessions, embracing the great states of Nor- 
thern Europe, save France, with their culture, wealth, 
social industry, and national order. And besides these, 
we see a huge proportion of men in all these lands, with 
no professed faith in any organized church, from the 
defined unbeliever to the indifferentist. It is a Christen- 
dom far enough from the organic unity of the Apos- 
tolic time. It may well demand the final application 



172 Epochs in Church History. 

of the historic law we have followed out through the 
whole past. That law explains it. It is the age of 
transition. Such intervals of action and reaction are 
found all along in this great record ; but none have 
been so great or critical as this. If we have studied the 
work of the Reformation aright, we have learned its 
good and its imperfection. It is hardly more than 
three centuries since that vast convulsion broke Europe 
in twain, changed alike its social and religious bal- 
ance, set free all the elemental forces of a new civiliza- 
tion ; and it cannot reach its result save by the slow, 
full working of these forces. The Reformation must 
lead Europe out of the decayed Catholic unity of a 
feudal age. Its very convulsion was a passage to the 
truer unity. But it could not be completed at once. 
To regard the Church or Christendom of the Reforma- 
tion as perfect, or as more than a beginning, is the fa- 
tal falsehood which has always led Protestantism to 
seek a mistaken unity in some theological concordat, 
and ended in driving men back in their despair at 
such dogmatic patchwork to some Nicene or Latin 
absolutism. Protestantism must accept its conditions 
of progress. It declared its principle of personal 
faith, of honest criticism, of authority based not on 
tradition but reasonable law. It must reach its right 
results only through such thorough methods of science 
and activity. We have not yet reached them ; but we 
have reached much, and all that could be looked for 



The Church of the Future. 173 

by sober minds. There has been the conflict, the ret- 
rograde, the onward movement, the solid gain for the 
truth of Christianity. We are still midway in the 
tide, in the trough of this great wave ; but we can 
know its heights and depths ; we can know enough to 
assure us of the issue. Each of the elements of this 
modern Christendom of which I spoke, has to-day its 
place and part in the process ; and our task must be 
fairly to show the relation of each to the problem now 
before the Christian period where our lot is cast. 

Let me turn, first, to those older Christian bodies, 
which represent the past ; not because the Greek or 
Latin communion stands foremost in the true view of 
Church history, but because they are first in the order 
of development. The law of Christ, " the last shall be 
first, and the first last," is the axiom of Church his- 
tory. 

I need linger but briefly on the Greek Communion, 
once the majestic representative of the one Nicene 
faith, now its dead, scattered bones, save in the Rus- 
so-Greek national body. It is not for any to predict 
its future, since Russia itself is hardly yet within the 
circle of European ideas or civilization. So far as this 
Church is concerned, it has had but little to do with 
even the partial progress of Russia in culture or social 
institutions ; it has remained only the keeper of the 
old Byzantine creed and traditions. Nor is there any 
more unhistoric absurdity than to regard it as the in- 



174 Epochs in Church History, 

heritor of the Greek Church, save as a barbarian race 
may build its houses out of the fragments of a Par- 
thenon. Its history is told best in the very lacunce of 
Stanley's History of the Eastern Church, where we drop 
suddenly from the great Nicene age through the void 
of lifeless centuries, and land on the barren flat of the 
Muscovite Communion. The Greek age of thought 
and life closed with the decay of the East. It had no 
continuity like the Latin Church, because it was out of 
the road of European civilization. The Russo-Greek 
Communion has not contributed an idea or an element 
of life to the historic movement of Christendom. It 
sits in the patriarchal chair, and holds fast the Nicene 
creed, and chants the liturgy of Chrysostom. Un- 
doubtedly it has had epochs of stirring national inter- 
est and great men. It had scholars in patristic learn- 
ing. But it knows nothing of Christian thought or 
struggle since the great schism. Nothing can better 
show its spirit than the fate of the deputation sent 
by the English nonjurors to seek intercommunion. 
The message was received with grave courtesy, and 
refused. The representative of this Holy Eastern 
Body knew nothing of an Anglican Church, its Refor- 
mation, or its Protestant history; but only opened his 
slumbrous eyes, and lapsed again into self-satisfied 
dreams of the unchanged Filioque. And there is, 
I think, nothing more characteristic of the unhistoric 
spirit of Anglo-Catholic churchmanship, than its 



The Church of the Future. 175 

repeated attempt since that ludicrous embassy to 
re-establish the unity of Christendom by some act of 
intercommunion with the Greek patriarch. What 
idea of Church history have the scholastics of Oxford, 
who ignore the churches of the Reformation, the 
whole life of learning and spiritual action in the Prot- 
estant body, to patch a Nicene concordat with the semi- 
barbaric East ? I leave that Church to its future. It 
may doubtless have a place hereafter in the common 
life of Christendom. If, however, we may judge by 
the striking facts opened within the past few years, 
the vast amount of sects, many of the strangest sort, 
prove that the national Church has lost, even in Rus- 
sia, much of its religious power. Its stolid orthodoxy 
has not prevented schism, but only created a very 
ignorant priesthood, and a gross superstition. I do 
not hesitate to say that I have far more hope of liv- 
ing reform in the Latin than the Greek Communion. 
The Russian Church has kept its Nicene orthodoxy as 
the Ephesian sleepers kept their youth in the cavern. 
We need not concern ourselves farther with it in our 
study of the question before the Christendom of this 
later century. 

I pass, then, to the position of the Latin commun- 
ion at this day. In it we have the compact, organ- 
ized, centralized power of the ancient body. And we 
must, as Protestants, if we will be not only fair to Rome, 
but true to the judgments of history, weigh aright its 



iy6 Epochs in Church History. 

truth and error. We too often, even now, are blinded 
by an hereditary prejudice so that we cannot learn 
the secret of its real power. As a Church system it 
has never been, since the Catholic body was broken at 
the Reformation, more than a narrow, ecclesiastical 
sect. It has grown narrower with each period since the 
Tridentine Council, until to-day it has reached the per- 
fection of an absolute, infallible autocracy. It keeps 
the structure of the feudal age. It keeps the un- 
changed theology of its scholastic time. It is the 
mortal enemy of all science, all education beyond its 
own ecclesiastical rule. It can have no reconcilement 
with the principles of national order or social develop- 
ment. But we are not to forget, first of all, that the 
fixed system of Rome is by no means the Roman 
Catholic Church. The old religion yet holds its sway 
over the Latin races ; and under all the superstition 
there is a vast amount of intelligence and goodness. 
We are as narrow, indeed, as the most bigoted Papist 
when we suppose that the learning and piety are 
chiefly in the Protestant ranks. That great commun- 
ion embodies for thousands of devout men the most 
sacred ties of the past. There are many among them, 
like Montalembert, who are keenly alive to its corrup- 
tions, but to whom a severance from its body would 
appear only schism. Undoubtedly, again, it has much 
which gives it a real power in its conflict with Protes- 
tantism. It has retained, even in its pretended un- 



The Church of the Future. 177 

changeableness, that historic character, that visible 
unity, that image of the oldest part, which appeals 
strongly to the imaginative mind of Southern Europe. 
Protestantism to such minds is an atomism of wrangling 
sects. There are elements, too, of religious influence 
which must not be undervalued, the love of Christian art, 
and the aesthetic beauty of worship that enter largely 
into the popular belief, which from the first have 
been thrust aside by the colder, more logical spirit of 
the reformed churches as only superstitions. The the- 
ological bias of Protestantism has too often ended in 
a loveless and repulsive piety. Much, indeed, of the 
religious dogma of the Roman Church contains ele- 
ments of truth which have been lost in the sharp an- 
tagonism of a Calvinistic system ; its ethical side of 
the doctrine of good works, its humane notion of Pur- 
gatory, its doctrine of sacrifice, of the communion of 
saints. Romanism has created a fanciful mythology, 
but the Protestant creeds have, on the other side, so 
sternly defined the faith as to leave no room for the 
Christian sentiment. Most of all, the Roman Church 
has by its compact organization, its unity of action, an 
unquestioned strength in the religious contests that 
naturally arise in such a period as our own. It has 
the strength of a self-poised power. We are mistaken 
when we think Rome weaker since the Reformation ; 
it is stronger, because the elements of contradiction 

were then thrust out ; and when it recovered itself 

8* 



178 Epochs in Church History. 

after the first blow it gathered its forces into its cita- 
del. The old Catholic Church down to the Council 
of Constance had its reformers ; Rome does not now 
dread them. The Basle Council dethroned the Pope ; 
that of this age deifies him. It has the centralization 
of a sect with the seeming Catholicity of the Church. 
And thus, as it represents a fixed, unshrinking tradi- 
tion, it always gains by the strifes which are insepara- 
ble from the less compact body of Protestantism. 
Protestantism must always admit the principles of free- 
dom. It cannot shut out critical science or religious 
independence. Even an Anglo-Catholic revival could 
not restore this absolute authority, or unprotestantize 
the English Church ; and hence, minds like Newman, 
were compelled by their logic to the Roman unity. 

In this view of the position of the Latin Papacy I 
have summed its history. We need only look at the 
facts to verify it. Ever since the counter Reformation, 
so well described by Ranke, its growth has repeated 
this principle. It has thriven by reaction. There 
have been grand social and religious movements, 
which have swept over Europe. The eighteenth cen- 
tury had its issue in the French revolution. That 
earthquake swallowed up monarchy and Church ; and 
when it was over the affrighted nation was ready to 
accept the despotism of Rome in its fear of the 
atheism and radicalism of the past. Rome had gained 
at a stroke all which had been wrenched from it by the 



The Church of the Future. 179 

Gallican liberties. Not only in France, but in Germany 
and Italy, there followed a revival of the ultramontane 
spirit. It had its literary heralds in scholars and 
artists ; in a Stolberg and a Schlegel. Chateaubriand 
charmed the sentiment with his " Genie du Chris- 
tianisme," and Montalembert dreamed of the union 
of the Church with a new social order. But that ideal 
Catholicity faded away, and the antagonism between 
Rome and the spirit of modern thought became again 
manifest. The newer movements of science, of criti- 
cism, of social liberty were felt everywhere. Another 
age of scepticism and license was the dread of Chris- 
tian men in the Protestant as well as the Catholic body. 
It has been followed by another reaction. All the 
timid conservatism, the blind fear of progress, sought 
relief in some traditional Christianity. Anglicanism 
was one marked phase of this reaction. It sought to 
oppose to the liberal tendencies of England the 
ancient Church, with the restored authority of priest- 
hood and sacraments. But its principles swept it 
immediately into the type of Roman unity. It was the 
Roman Communion which alone held and holds the 
consistent position. The syllabus was the clear 
pronunciamento of its rule of faith. It declares utter 
war against all freedom in the examination of every 
question, in science, history, criticism, touching its 
fixed dogma. This is its creed. It cannot be mistaken ; 
it declares again its supremacy over all national laws, 



180 Epochs in Church History. 

constitutions, and powers in regard to the relation of the 
Church to the State. This is its law. Its power may- 
be resisted or controlled, but its claim is simply this. 
Its history to-day has been only the carrying out of 
this absolute claim. There have been within our 
generation two great councils which reveal its whole 
character. I shall only touch the former to say, that 
it shows us two weighty facts. The Roman Church 
in its decree of the immaculate conception has closed 
the circle of Latin theology by substituting a myth, as 
the central truth of Christianity, instead of the Catho- 
lic faith of God in Christ. Its religion is now a myth- 
ology. But I am far more concerned with its later 
council. It has decreed the infallibility of the Pontiff. 
I do not care to discuss here the doctrinal falsehood of 
this decree ; it is only as it bears on the position of the 
Church that I regard it. It is the striking feature of 
the case, that it was not the source of any theological 
debates in the great council ; the truth of it was as- 
sumed as the implicit belief of all the orthodox doc- 
tors, and the only question was whether it should be 
explicitly affirmed. This fact leads at once to my con- 
clusion. It has been the argument of most Protestant 
divines, and by Old Catholics like Dorner, that the 
claim of infallibility was never before made for the 
Pontiff, but only for the Church as embodied in the 
CEcumenical Council. Be it so. It simply proves 
that, as Newman has keenly reasoned, the Roman 



The Church of the Future. 181 

Church has been forced to perfect its own logic. An 
infallible body must have an infallible head. It was 
not the logic of the dialectician, but what has been 
well called the logic of history, that compelled this 
dogma. The Catholic Church of the tenth or twelfth 
century could hold much undefined opinion, nay, con- 
tradiction in its bosom ; could have Pope and anti- 
Pope. But the absolutism of the modern Church must 
push its principles to the last result. This was un- 
questionably the spirit of the council. Its aim was to 
maintain the changeless unity of faith and Church 
order. It could not do it save by such a dogma. 
There was no more absurdity in declaring a divine 
infallibility in the Pontiff than in holding the claims 
of the Syllabus ; it was a sublime consistency. And 
there can be no doubt, absurd as the dogma is to 
reason, that it was this" credo quia impossible," which 
made it triumphant over not only the assembled 
Bishops and Doctors, but Catholic Christendom. In 
a very telling essay shortly after, an eminent writer, 
M. Dalgairns, maintained as the one convincing argu- 
ment, that in a age where absolute freedom was lead- 
ing men to unbelief, the only bulwark of Catholic 
faith is an infallibility embodied in the visible head of 
Christendom. Such is my view of the position of 
the Roman Church. It is the acceptance of its real 
place and work. It is the ultimate appeal to an 
authority above reason. It claims no more than many 



1 82 Epochs in Church History, 

Protestant dogmatists have done, than Anglo-Cath- 
olic doctors do, but it claims it with undisguised 
voice. 

And in this view of the position of Rome, we can 
know its whole relation to the problem of modern 
Christianity. We know its real power. We need 
not deceive ourselves with the Protestant delusion 
that it is soon to fade away. It will last so long as 
Protestantism remains the same divided system of 
rival theologies, without any real unity in its view of 
science or history. As such an ecclesiastical party, 
strong by the defects of others, it is doubtless of vast 
influence. Its growth in Protestant countries is thus 
its chief feature. In Germany, the home of Luther 
and the Reformation, it is able to wield a concentrated 
political might. In England it has already fixed its 
archiepiscopal seat, and hopes to be again the master. 
In America, it has a colonial power greater than its 
European hierarchy. But this growth ought not to 
alarm any thinking mind ; for it is clear that it is due 
to its organized activity, not to its inherent and last- 
ing progress. If we believe in the reality of such a 
progress of Christianity, we shall never mistake the 
issue of the conflict. If we would know what Ro- 
manism is, we have only to turn from this external 
view to its internal condition. It has reached the 
point, in all Latin countries, where it is now power- 
less over the intellectual and social movement. Italy 



The Church of the Future, 183 

has dethroned it from its temporal seat. The last 
dream of a union of the Pontificate with national life 
was dispelled by Pius IX. In the day of Manzoni 
and Gioberti, Italian scholars were still sincerely 
Catholic. The present generation has largely re- 
nounced that faith, and too often been driven into 
the denial of Christianity. In Southern Germany 
and Austria the men of science and letters are chiefly 
on the side of liberalism. The government retains a 
traditional union with the Church ; but one by one 
the ultramontane prerogatives have been shorn away. 
Education, marriage, right of inheritance, exclusive 
rights of worship, are gone, even in the empire of 
Metternich. The cultured classes are divorced from 
the Church. There is no religious war, as in the 
past. Modern thinkers do not march out in a body 
with the sound of the trumpet. The Church is simply 
left to its traditions and anathemas. Indeed, the 
growth of unbelief in Catholic countries is a phenom- 
enon which deserves our study. It is not, as in 
Protestant countries, an earnest conflict of ideas, a 
recognition even by unbelievers of a partial truth in 
Christianity, but it is a scornful indifference, an utter 
dismissal of Christianity, as outside the sphere of 
reasonable thought. We are wont to talk of the 
modern unbelief as the peculiar growth of Protestant- 
ism. Let us know that its worst type has been, and 
is, the natural child of the Roman tradition ; and from 



1 84 Epochs in Church History. 

Voltaire to our day it has grown until there is no 
reconciliation. Rome has taught minds like Renan 
to identify the Christian faith with its system of my- 
thology and despotism, and intellectual freedom has 
ended in entire denial. 

But, if this shows the inner decay of the Church, it 
is to be found again in another striking fact of our 
time. The reverence for the Catholic faith and wor- 
ship has thus far kept a vast body of sincere believers 
within the Roman fold. The intellectual and social 
fetters have not broken their faith in some future re- 
form. But now its hold on this class has been rudely 
broken. I touch here on the Old Catholic schism. It 
is not my design, in this brief sketch, to do more than 
show its relation to the future of the Latin body. 
Indeed, I do not think we can thus far know enough 
of its development, to pronounce on the issues of the 
movement. It w r as.a revolt which began rather with 
scholars like Dollinger, and had not its roots so wide- 
spread in the character of the South German people, 
or the social relations of the time, as the Protestant 
Reformation. It has been marked by a cautious 
effort to keep the Catholic traditions, and build itself, 
like the Church of England, on the Episcopate and 
historic Creed. If it can do this with a true recogni- 
tion of Protestant principles, taking heed of its de- 
fects, it will take a grand step. But if it. seek the via 
media of the Anglo-Catholic school, it will end, as that 



The Church of the Future. 185 

will, in a fruitless theory. Nothing can be more exact 
than the comparison by Stanley, in illustration of the 
attempt at the Roman conference by English divines to 
make a concordat with the Old Catholic leaders. They 
were, he said, like the two factions, one ascending and 
the other going down the mountain, but meeting for 
a half hour at the half-way inn. The Anglo-Catholic 
would go back from the Protestant life to the dead 
Nicenepast. The Old Catholic must go forward. Both 
want a better unity than Rome ; both want the historic 
elements which Protestantism has not kept. But they 
are not to be found in any isolated via media. It is yet 
to be seen in what Old Catholicism shall end. The 
scholastic debates at Rome on the Filioque, the effort 
at intercommunion with the Greek Patriarchate, were 
not signs of a true life. But so far as the Latin body 
is concerned, it is the most significant of historic 
changes. It proves that the disease has reached the 
vitals. Ultramontanism has taken its last step, its 
changeless attitude in the decree of infallibility; and 
the first result has been to show that a large part, the 
wisest and devoutest, no longer will accept its des- 
potism. No such movement can go back. It is the 
beginning of the end. We cannot know what the 
next step may be, although it seems most likely that 
it will result in the gradual renunciation of the Papacy 
as supreme, and the formation of the independent, 
national, Catholic body in each State where the move- 



1 86 Epochs in Church History. 

merit has begun. Whatever the process, the disinte- 
gration of Roman absolutism is begun. 

And thus we can pass to the position of Protestant 
Christendom. My judgment will, of course, be the 
result of my view of its historic principles. Its long 
strife, since the Reformation, seems, alike to the Ro- 
manist, the Anglo-Catholic, and the unbeliever in any 
positive revelation, the proof that it is hastening to 
decay. Neither sees any alternative save in the tradi- 
tional Church or the death of Christianity. I have 
claimed that the Protestant Reformation was not 
merely the negation of the Roman hierarchy, but the 
positive declaration of faith in the living Christ. It 
rejected the principle of Roman tradition, and ac- 
cepted that of true scientific inquiry. It rejected 
ecclesiastical despotism, and accepted the law of his- 
toric growth. But in so doing it was led by the nat- 
ural conditions of such a movement to a partial and 
often erroneous development. It threw off the Roman 
tradition, but it substituted for it another scholasti- 
cism, and thus ended in rival theologies instead of the 
one simple truth. There was thus necessary a long, 
slow battle within its own household. The contest 
with Rome for life or death ended with the century 
after the Reformation ; it was followed by another of 
warring creeds and sects. But with the eighteenth 
century there awoke the deeper struggle. It came out 
of the theological controversies which had made the 



The Church of the Future. 187 

revelation of Christ a speculative mystery. The deism 
of the century was a natural result of the newly awak- 
ened philosophic thought against the formal systems 
of the Church. It was gross, one-sided, superficial ; 
but it was necessary to the awakening of a truer 
Christian study. That study has from that day to this 
led to the more thorough criticism of the nature and 
purpose of revelation. It has been called out by each 
successive phase of speculative or critical opinion 
which has in turn asked the meaning of a supernatural 
Christianity ; by the rationalism of Kant, the pantheism 
of Strauss, and the latest historic criticism of Baur. 
We are now in the last stage of the battle. What is 
the result ? I do not fear to say a stronger and more 
assured belief. Each honest investigation has ended 
in placing the essential facts of revelation on stronger 
ground. Criticism has led to the surrender of much 
which was once held part of the divine record ; but it 
has given far more than it has taken away. All our 
richest knowledge of the wisdom and literature of the 
East, of the sublime truth of the Old Testament, of 
the character of the New, its structure and harmony, 
is the result of criticism. Rationalism has compelled 
Christian science to follow the strict method of in- 
quiry. It has shown the unscientific character of the 
theological law of interpretation, and in so doing it 
has proved the insufficiency of the theory of an infal- 
libly inspired Bible. To many this seems the death 



1 88 Epochs in Church History, 

of Christian truth. But it is the very contrary. It 
was the scholastic age of the Reformation which reared 
this theory into its prominence, just as the Roman 
scholasticism reared the theory of an infallible, dog- 
matic Church, and each was only the source of unbe- 
lief. The Bible became the text-book of theological 
wrangles, and the contending sects of Luther or Calvin 
or Grotius forced it out of its real meaning. A de- 
structive criticism has found its strongest point of 
attack in this mistaken view of Scripture ; it has be- 
lieved it overturned Christianity in finding errors in the 
cosmogony of Moses, or the books of the Pentateuch. 
But it has only taught the Christian to study more 
deeply the principles of revelation. It has taught us 
to study the structure of the Bible, to distinguish be- 
tween its divine parts and its secondary historic form. 
We have far less reason to fear the assaults of unbelief 
to-day than before. We ought rather to be grateful 
that the strength of revelation has been proved in the 
battle with each theory which would destroy it. If 
the Protestant Church has learned that its power lies 
not in the crude systems of the past it need not fear 
science. 

But this view opens at once the further question as 
to the large body of men in our day who stand apart 
from all union with the organized Christian Church. 
I do not doubt the growing number. I do not under- 
rate the error or the evil. It is its character we should 



The Church of the Future, 189 

study. There have been always and must be a certain 
number of speculative thinkers and of practical indif- 
ferentists. It cannot be otherwise. But they are above 
all the accompaniment of an age of freedom in religious 
thought, and of much confusion. It is a serious ques- 
tion how much larger the number is than in an age 
when heresy was refuted by the stake, as with Giordano 
Bruno, or when so lately as in the English Church of 
the last century Tindal was imprisoned for deism. 
We have already seen in the Roman Church to-day 
that there is probably as great a proportion of silent 
unbelievers, baptized and confirmed yet utterly creed- 
less, as in Protestant lands. But it is not a question 
to me, after all, whether this silent unbelief or the open 
conflict be the truer condition of Christianity. It is 
in this light I approach this phenomenon of our times. 
It is not to be regarded as a greater danger than it 
really is. It is simply the condition of our imperfect 
growth. We have in every great epoch of contest be- 
tween Christianity and unbelief two factors, the one- 
sided excess of speculative thought, and the unreason- 
able authority of dogma. We cannot escape that col- 
lision. We cannot reach any lasting triumph save by 
the process of sounder learning. The revolt of the 
rationalizing schools of the middle ages was caused by 
the formal realism of the schools. English deism was 
the gross protest of Tindal and Chubb against the 
rigid theology; but it created Butler and Tillotson. 



190 Epochs in Church History. 

German transcendentalism had its great circle of 
thinkers till it faded into vague pantheism, but it 
created the spiritual minds which drew Christian the- 
ology out of its scholastic husk. Modern unbelief is 
the reaction against this ideal excess ; it has led on 
one side to a cold, keen, analytic criticism, on another 
to a bald materialism. Yet, instead of seeing in it an 
unmixed peril, I count it on one side a benefit. I 
have shown already what Christian truth has gained 
from criticism. But I go further yet. It is to my 
view the best feature of the conflict that it is no 
longer, as in the day of Butler or Coleridge, a vague, 
spiritual deism or pantheism which attacks revelation. 
It is the honest confession of Mill and Spencer that 
there is no standing ground between agnosticism and 
a positive Christianity. We need not fear in such a 
battle. We have gained our best strength when we 
can know that the religion of Christ is sustained by 
the most sacred beliefs of the moral nature. It will 
teach us more and more that revelation is one with 
that sober science which is as sure to refute the material- 
ism of to-day as it has each speculative theory of the 
past. If in this light we regard the feature of modern 
unbelief, we shall see in it nothing but the natural 
phase of this age of transition. The scientific positiv- 
ist is himself a one-sided negation. It is against the 
theological abstractions he mistakes for Christianity 
that he opposes his hard realism. It is not strange 



The Church of the Future. 191 

to-day, as in the past, that there should be many un- 
settled minds, some earnest, more half cultured, who 
are affected by the tone of this unbelief. There is a 
fashion to-day of talking of a new evangel, a nobler 
religion of humanity. But the religion of Christ has 
seen many such fashions come and go. I would advise 
these prophets of a new religion, as well as the fearful 
defenders of the faith, to read Dean Swift's " Considera- 
tions on the inconveniences of the plan for the aboli- 
tion of Christianity." We are merely unbelievers 
ourselves if we have not trust enough in it to leave 
the result to Christian learning and " the next gener- 
ation." 

If, then, I have given you the fair summary of Chris- 
tendom as it is, we can pass to our conclusion. This is 
the age of transition. It looks forward, therefore, to 
an age of reconcilement. The harmony of Christian 
history can only be from the solution of discords ; its 
confusion is the step to the order. And it is as we 
study this result in the same defined lines of thought, 
that we shall find this anticipation of the future to be 
no vague dream, but a clear forecast. I shall look at 
this next age of Christianity in its two directions, as 
the reconcilement of science with religious faith, and 
of the social life of our times with the Church. Both 
directions meet in the result, as in the beginning. 
Christianity was a truth embodied in a social fact ; its 
completeness will only be as it becomes again a social 



192 Epochs in Church History. 

fact, a life greater than a scientific theology. But it 
must first fulfil its need of educating the race. And 
thus we can understand the result of this period in the 
ripe knowledge of Christian truth. All the stages of 
this doctrinal development in the Church have, one by- 
one, been the exposition of the central fact of God in 
Christ, and Christ in us, as that fact concerns the so- 
cial relations of human thought. Theology, anthro- 
pology, soteriology, God in Christ, the condition of 
man, the gift of redemption, these have been the cen- 
tres of doctrinal inquiry. Each has had its unfolding 
in connection with the intellectual character of its age. 
Each entire period of the Church has made its contri- 
bution. Protestantism has been the latest and ripest 
in this task of education. It has in its doctrine of the 
personal Christ and personal faith opened the road of 
free inquiry. It has wrought with the new spirit of 
critical science, which leads modern thought. It has 
demolished the dogmatic method of the Latin the- 
ology. But in this critical inquiry it has itself reached 
the point where its own analysis is exhausted, where 
its conflicting creeds must lead either to the denial of 
all positive revealed truth, or to the finding of substan- 
tial, abiding ground. This is already the result it has 
half gained. Critical study has brought it, step by 
step, from theological systems to the Biblical sources ; 
it has next brought it from the old theological mode 
of interpreting Scripture to the living truth it con- 



The Church of the Future. 193 

tains. As all science at last ends in the grasp of the 
simplest laws, as " depth of philosophy bringeth us 
back to religion," so the conflicts of criticism are 
bringing us back to the knowledge of Christian truth 
as one in the divine person of Christ, and his historic, 
living Gospel. Theology has not faded away. It is a 
nobler study than before. But the age of a Latin or 
a Protestant scholasticism is passing. It is neither to 
a Nicene Council nor a Synod of Augsburg or Dort 
we look for a dogmatic decision. It is a return by the 
method of Christian learning, by impartial study of 
history, to the child-like, simple, positive faith, that 
could utter itself in the Apostles' Creed. We are 
learning that all the sound doctrines of Incarnation, 
Atonement, Grace, Church and Sacrament, are one in 
the living truth of Christ. We are learning the rela- 
tion of the one essential truth to its theological expo- 
sitions. The period of theological strife and critical 
strife is passing into the ethical unity. All our doc- 
trinal ideas and systems are now looked at as they 
make Christianity a life. This, I affirm, is the process 
of our time. I do not say, or hope, that it is more 
than partially wrought out. We have and shall have 
our sincere minds, who see in all this only a lapse of 
faith, and will stem the tide of what they call license, 
eclecticism, rationalism, by a new Protestant decree, 
or by Anglo-Catholic dogmatic unity. But if I have 
reasoned aright, their effort is the fruit of unwise fear, 
9 



194 Epochs in Church History. 

not of true study. It is the positive truth, which the 
Nicene decrees only affirm, and the positive results of 
Protestant thought, which are to meet in this better 
unity. 

Yet this result extends beyond the unity of Chris- 
tian churches to the larger problem of science and 
faith. It is when the Church has thus learned the 
difference between, or rather the substantial agree- 
ment of its creeds in a deeper view of revelation, that 
its chief source of contest will be ended. The wrong 
conception of the Scripture has been the reason why 
questions of criticism and science have been made 
questions of Christian belief. True science will have 
no controversy with the divine and spiritual facts of 
Hebrew or Gospel history. We are learning that it is 
not a matter merely of Scripture and geology, but of 
our own Christianity whether we identify the living 
truth of Christ with the theories of the earth's struct- 
ure, and the obscure riddles of man's pre -historic 
beginnings. That we have reached this reconciliation 
I by no means affirm. But all criticism tends toward 
it. And it will be found again, that when the Chris- 
tian science of the time has reached this, the further 
conflict between it and the materialism of the age 
will fast vanish. 

And thus I pass to the further and closing view of 
the result of the time in the relation of the Church as 
an organized body to the life of Christendom. It is in 



The Church of the Future. 195 

the fulfilling of the same law. As the past stages of its 
theological and critical development have at length 
brought it to the living unity of truth, so its visible 
development has been a progress toward its true end 
as the kingdom of God. The Church is the germ of 
the greater fellowship of regenerated man. Its 
history has been the growth toward this end. It has 
passed through its first period of Greek schooling, 
and, yet further, its necessary discipline of forward 
youth under the yoke of the Latin law. But it 
needed that the outward yoke should with its ripe 
manhood become the self-governed law. It is thus 
that the Protestant freedom, which broke the childish 
servitude, should after its season of strife find its nobler 
unity. Such is the process we see to-day. We see 
the many divisions of modern Christendom. What 
is this solution ? It is not in any return to the 
Catholicity of the Latin type. That Catholicity, as 
we see, belongs to the feudal age, and modern Rome 
in its claim simply assumes an absolutism utterly at 
war with religious or social freedom. Nothing is 
more absurd than the Eirenicon of a Pusey, who in 
one breath shows that the religion of the Roman 
Church is Mariolatry, and in the next hopes for some 
concordat on the basis of Trent, out of which this 
idolatry has been developed. It cannot be in the 
Anglo-Catholic abstraction of a Nicene unity. The 
Church cannot ignore the real work which has been 



196 Epochs in Church History. 

done by the centuries since the Reformation. Its 
unity must come out of the present life, as it em- 
bodies the gathered experience of the past. 

This is the character of the change going forward 
in Christendom. It is to come, as in the progress of 
doctrinal knowledge, by the clearer understanding of 
the original structure of the Church and its right rela- 
tion to history. The one-sided Protestant idea, which 
grew out of its severance from the corrupt past, that 
the Church of the New Testament was meant to be a 
perfect system of theology and polity, is disappearing 
before the criticism of to-day. It is no longer possible 
for the Anglican to find his exact model of Epis- 
copacy, the Presbyterian or Independent his parity or 
democracy, the Baptist his absolute rule of immer- 
sion. It is seen that the Church of the Apostolic age 
was a living germ, not a full-grown kingdom of God. 
Such a view already is leading to a juster conception 
of history. There is far less of the tendency to narrow 
the great body into one confession or polity. It is 
felt that each has had a part in the manifold working 
out of the historic life of the whole. It is seen that 
there must be a recognition of a Catholic ground, 
which shall unite in the substantial features of faith 
and order, and leave room for the variety that is the 
condition of historic growth. Vague and crude as 
such movements are, they are the signs of the common 
aim. No Evangelical alliance on one side repre- 



The Church of the Future. igy 

sents them ; though imperfect as its basis is, its spirit is 
noble. Anglicanism has its solid kernel of truth in 
the demand for unity above all special Protestant 
confessions; it only fails because it identifies the 
Church with a divinely ordered Episcopate. It is far 
as yet from a harmonious solution. But the converg- 
ing lines will find it. Protestantism will not go back 
to the mediaeval or Nicene pattern ; but it will inte- 
grate itself; it will assimilate what is true or beautiful in 
the worship, the art, the order of the past ; it will recog- 
nize the worth of that historic unity it has forgotten. 
And, on the other side, all point to the hope that the 
sound study of Scripture and history is leading the 
scholars of the Anglican Communion to the position 
of their own reformers, to a comprehensive view of one 
essential unity as a body. Such, I say, are the signs. 
It is not for me to enter into any reckoning of what 
organic form this unity will bring. Certainly I have no 
idea that it will end in any uniformity. I dream of no 
oecumenical council in this age ; of no settlement on 
the basis of an Episcopate or a Prayer Book. It is not 
to be wished that there should be any less variety in 
this vast Christendom, until the Church has reached 
this real unity. 

And to complete my sketch, as the spirit of 
sect dies, and the great portions of the body are 
united in this true organism of life, the Church will 
enter on that largest work of social action, which 



198 Epochs in Church History. 

alone shall fulfil its mission for the time wherein our 
lot is cast. For it is no longer the age of theological 
or ecclesiastical issues. It is in the historic provi- 
dence of God the time, when, as never before, the 
Christian Church is needed in its fullest strength to 
meet the demands of a vast and confused civilization. 
The day is past when men of earnest thought are 
busied chiefly with the questions of Church polity. 
It is what the Gospel and Kingdom of Christ can do 
for the solution of the growing riddles of society, the 
inequality of caste, the purifying of the deep corrup- 
tions of our time, the overgrown luxury, the intricate 
diseases, physical and moral, the curse of serfdom and 
war, the promotion of peace, of international union. 
We are not to ignore these problems. It is because the 
Church of Christ has too often ignored them, and in 
the pretence that these are secular matters has busied 
herself with her strifes of creed and ritual, that the larger 
part of modern unbelievers has left her communion 
and sought elsewhere for the religion of humanity. 
It is the real Kingdom of God which the world seeks 
to-day. Its bold thinkers, like St. Simon and Comte, 
have not found it in the ecclesiastical body which 
claimed its right, and have renounced it for another. 
But, if it be the Kingdom of Christ, it is to prove its 
origin to-day in the fulfilment of its Master's design. 



RICHARD HOOKER. 

There is no one name among the early divines of the 
English Church which would be chosen as the best 
type of its faith, its historic order, or its ripe learning, 
before that of Hooker. None has been more often 
claimed as the defender of its principles. None has 
had more lavish praise from those who would shelter 
their Church theories behind the bulwarks of his fame. 
And yet, because he was in the truest sense the repre- 
sentative of his age, I do not fear to say that there 
is hardly one who has been less understood. It was 
with the second sight of genius, that Bacon be- 
queathed his name to the next age ; yet it would be 
nearer the truth if we say that in the greatest exam- 
ples of intellectual life we need several generations to 
read them. We acknowledge this law at once in the 
realm of science, where the intuitions of a Kepler 
must wait the slow test of a half century. Yet it is 
as true in letters and art. Even Shakespeare has only 
won his rank as sovereign of the modern drama since 
the criticism of Germany has taught England to read 
him. We are indebted to Dean Stanley for the fact 
that the name of Milton is not mentioned by Clar- 
is 



200 Epochs in Church History. 

endon. But it is truest of all, although from another 
cause, with the thinkers who have been thrown by- 
good or evil hap into the strifes of their own time, 
yet by the very grandeur of their thoughts have 
"dwelt apart," alike misunderstood by the wrangling 
parties in Church or State. History measures them 
for a while by its foot rule, and calls them High 
Church or Evangelical, Tory or Whig. The Moses of 
Michael Angelo was carved to fill a corner of a monu- 
ment to Julius II. ; the group was never finished ; the 
Pontiff is forgotten ; but the one statue remains, grand 
enough on its own pedestal. 

I know none to whom this latter judgment of our 
own time is more justly due than this great jurist of 
the English Church. His lot was to uphold the na- 
tional establishment when it was in its first fierce 
struggle between Puritan and traditional Churchmen ; 
and because he sought to define its ground of historic 
law he has been claimed by the school of Anglican 
theorists from the day of Laud to the latest Oxford 
type. Divines like Pusey misquote his sentences, and 
poetic sentimentalists like Keble have edited his 
Polity. Their claims have been allowed, with that 
lack of any historic sense which so marks it, by the 
Evangelical school. We find even so able a brain as 
Dorner, in his history of Protestant theology, so half 
read as to class the English divine nearest to the type 
of his own sober Church, with the sacerdotal party. 



Richard Hooker, 201 

Yet in truth his position has no more to do with the 
ecclesiastical system of the Laudian time than that of 
a geological professor with the fossil bones he has 
studied. He belongs to no school. To him more 
than any other we can see the spirit of English na- 
tional churchmanship, before the long struggle had 
ended in the separation of the party of reform, and 
the petrifaction of the Church party into a hard estab- 
lishment. And it is for this reason I have taken 
Hooker as the writer and the man in whom we can 
read the whole formative period of the English Ref- 
ormation. I believe the most needful lesson we can 
learn to-day, after the forty years' wandering in the 
wilderness of Oxford divinity, is to study aright that 
period in this book of the great jurist, and know the 
broad, solid, reasonable ground which the Church held 
at the beginning of its history. 

I mean, then, to sketch the outline of his life, as it 
is closely linked with the religious state of the time 
when he wrote, and then show the position he held as 
scholar, theologian, and jurist. 

It is in what I may call the second stage of the 
English Reformation that the birth and work of 
Hooker have their place ; and to know how he shaped 
the Church we must know how he, too, had been 
shaped by it. The Reformation had already passed 
through the first struggle, which joined all its wisest 
and best minds against the usurpation of Rome. In 



202 Epochs in Church History. 

its origin it sprang from the same religious and social 
causes as the movement of Germany and France. 
Nor was it merely, as has been often said, in this com- 
mon protest against a common foe that England 
shared. The Protestant principles of Luther and 
Calvin, the doctrine of justification, and the supremacy 
of Scripture above tradition were as strongly held by 
all its leaders, and embodied in its standards of faith. 
Yet while this original unity is clear to every student 
of that history, it is as clear that in certain features 
this growth of the Reformed Church in England was 
far apart from the rest. It was not, first of all, a 
movement which separated itself at the start from the 
national government ; but, on the contrary, it had be- 
gun by the act of the King in union with Parliament ; 
and had thus a solidarity unknown to the Protes- 
tantism of the Continent. This fact stamped itself on 
every part of the structure which arose by degrees. 
No overpowering brain or will created a theological 
system or a polity. The Church threw off the Papal 
superstitions, but it kept naturally the national wor- 
ship and order. It kept its creeds, its liturgy, its 
Episcopate. There were, of course, differences from 
the first between the more conservative and more 
zealous of the reformers, as in the opposition of 
Hooper to the robes. But they were not roots to the 
foundation. It is not till the reign of Elizabeth that 
we begin to see the distinct organization of a Puritan 



Richard Hooker. 203 

party within the Church ; and it is fairly to understand 
the causes of it that I am here concerned. 

I have said that the difference of growth in the 
English Church lay in its national character, and if, 
instead of any Anglican or Puritan theories, we will 
fairly trace that historic fact, we shall reach this truth. 
It has been the wont of Church historians to find the 
source of dissent in the Presbyterian innovations 
brought back by the Marian exiles from Geneva. It 
has been the want of the Neales and other champions 
of Puritanism to charge the sin on the semi-popish 
ways of Elizabeth and her " little black husband," 
Archbishop Whitgift. Yet surely we have, or ought 
to have, outlived these one-sided views, and can afford 
to know the truth. It was the honest purpose of the 
leaders of the Church to keep its national unity. 
There was no Romanism or semi-Romanism or Via 
Media theory or Catholic theory of our Oxford doc- 
trinaires. The Arminian views of Laud had not yet 
appeared. Whitgift himself, in whose time Hooker 
comes, is a thorough type of the High Churchman o£ 
that day ; a firm believer in the same theology that 
Calvin held, and proving distinctly that the Episco- 
pacy rested on no absolute, divine law, but only his- 
toric precedent. But it was the error of the Church- 
man then, as always, to mistake uniformity for unity. 
It was the most delicate of tasks to guide the strong 
passions and jealous differences of such a period ; but 



204 Epochs in Church History. 

there was neither statesmanship nor charity in the 
method. Elizabeth was at once a Tudor and a woman, 
a self-willed and crooked manager. Whitgift and 
Parker were honest pedants. It was this policy of 
uniformity that forced into growth the Presbyterian 
theory of the Church. The Puritan had brought it 
back with him from his Genevan exile, yet it was by 
no means at first a defined feature. Calvin himself 
was far from an enemy of the English prelacy, and 
had openly expressed his belief' that it was good for 
England although bad for Geneva. There was, again, 
with the Puritan the like intolerance in another shape. 
At the outset his cause was that of a just liberty. Yet 
it is not to be concealed that it became in many feat- 
ures at last narrower than that of the Churchman. 
His theology was of the hardest type of supralapsa- 
rianism. His theory of Church polity was that of 
a stern theocracy, incapable of tolerance in ideas, of 
healing the strifes of Christendom, of appreciating 
Christian art or history. Such is the just balance of 
the parties in the great national quarrel. We may 
safely sum it up by saying that there was no possibil- 
ity in that age of solving the problem of unity. No 
party had learned what toleration meant. Each be- 
lieved, when it had the power, in enforcing its creed 
by the stake, or the milder persuasion of slitting the 
ears of schism. History only could teach the lesson. 
It was necessary in Church as in State that the pas- 



Richard Hooker. 205 

sions of men should work out the discord. But what 
we are to study in the life of Hooker is the just and 
large principle which lay in the structure of the Eng- 
lish Reformation in spite of the vices that marred it. 
We are to prove that in the plan of its greatest think- 
ers it was the most comprehensive and reasonable of 
growths. We are to show that it can never be con- 
founded with any traditional theories of a later time, 
still less of modern Oxford ; that it was not only 
Protestant, but true to the broadest idea of Prot- 
estantism possible in that day. 

In such an embittered state of the Church Richard 
Hooker was born. I shall not dwell on the personal 
details of a life which, sweet and fair as it is in the 
biography of " honest Izaak Walton," is little more 
than that of the modest scholar seeking rest in his 
parish corner from the " evil times and evil tongues." 
The town of Exeter, his birthplace, is not the least 
among English names, for it can boast of Jewel, 
Drake, and Raleigh. It is a pleasant story of his 
youth, his early ripeness of learning, and his education 
at Oxford, where he is sent by Jewel with the gift of 
ten groats and his walking staff. We find him next 
in his poor parish of Drayton Beauchamp proving, 
like. Socrates before him, that though the wisest of 
men, he was a child in the knowledge of womankind. 
It is here that amusing idyl occurs, which Walton tells 
so quaintly, when his college friends, Edwin Sandys 



206 Epochs in Church History. 

and Cranmer, find him reading Horace and rocking 
the cradle, while his Xantippe gives them a shrewish 
welcome. But he has almost a harder experience 
when he is promoted at thirty-four to the Mastership 
of the Temple. It was his lot to encounter Master 
Travers, a godly but most uncomfortable Christian of 
the strictest Genevan type, a pupil of Cartwright, 
the arch tormentor of Whitgift, and the T. C. of the 
notes in Hooker's Polity. We need not charge Travers 
with a selfish spite because he had lost the post given 
to the young Hooker, for the theological feuds of that 
day are quite enough to explain what Walton calls 
" his intolerable stomach. " A sermon of the Mas- 
ter in which he, with his large charity, " doubted not 
God was merciful to many of our forefathers, being in 
popish superstition," called out the sharp answer of 
the Genevan ; and although Hooker was absolved 
after public defence, yet his position became a weari- 
ness, and he gave up the Temple. Nothing is more 
beautiful than his letter to Whitgift, praying to retire 
to the country, " where I may keep myself in peace 
and privacy, and behold God's blessing spring out of 
my mother earth, and eat my bread without opposi- 
tion." It is in the parish of Boscum he now gave him- 
self to his Polity, and probably four books were here 
finished. The great work was never completed, and 
we have now only an imperfect copy. But whatever 
reason of the loss, we have in what is left us the most 



Richard Hooker. 207 

massive monument of English learning, and we may 
be grateful that his fame was so largely a posthumous 
one, that his life was so happily apart from public 
strifes or honors as to leave behind a work greater 
than even the Whitgifts and Jewels had done for the 
Church. I think it one of the fairest features of the 
religion which was nursed in the English communion, 
as we see it in George Herbert, in Ferrar, and Hooker. 
It was at the early age of forty-six, in 1600, at his 
small parish of Borne, three miles from Canterbury, 
in the midst of earnest pastoral duties, beloved by the 
poor, devout and childlike as he had lived, that the 
author of the Ecclesiastical Polity died. His work 
abides as stately as the Cathedral of Canterbury itself. 

I must, before passing to the character of his great 
work, give a few words to the claims of Hooker as 
a man of letters. It is never to be forgotten that the 
first classic of English prose is the Ecclesiastical Polity. 
We have no writer before him who can share this 
honor. 

I do not, of course, call the style of Hooker, or of 
any of the great prose writers of that time, the model 
of English. We have in them all the long, involved 
sentences, retaining from the Saxon that inversion, so 
jarring to our ears, with much, too, of the stiffness of 
scholastic Latin. Yet there is in Hooker the richest 
beauty and strength of English speech. There can- 
not be found in Shakespeare or Spenser a choicer vo- 



208 Epochs in Church History. 

cabulary, or a nicer mastery of the language. But 
beyond this, he has a sense of poetic harmony as per- 
fect as Milton, a sweep of musical expression, a gath- 
ered, tidal eloquence, which give to the argument of 
his book at times the epic strength of the " Paradise 
Lost." We may well say that, had not his fame as a 
thinker eclipsed his lesser powers, were his Ecclesias- 
tical Polity to be read purely for its language, there 
is hardly a work so full of quotable passages. He can- 
not take up the small questions of a service-book or a 
wedding-ring, without making you feel that he is as 
far above the thought of a traditional Churchman as 
Michael Angelo was above a hodman. He will pile all 
authorities and all logic on a single point ; yet you 
know he is no dry polemic like a Bellarmine, but an 
ideal thinker reasoning of the laws of the divine state. 
There is a grandeur, even when he is forced in his 
great argument to descend to controversy ; he begins 
like the eagle with a vast circle, and sails by degrees 
inward in lesser rounds, until he poises himself at one 
point overhead, and, with an easy plunge strikes his 
beak into some small sparrow of a Travers. 

With this glance at the style of Hooker, I must 
hasten to the study of him as theologian and Church- 
man. I need not dwell long on his theological views, 
because his genius was not that of the speculative 
thinker ; nor has he left anything, save a few ser- 
mons, that have a special worth in this line. It is, 



Richard Hooker. 209 

however, in this very feature we can best understand 
the English Church of that time ; and no writer will 
more truly show us its difference from the leading 
minds among the reformers of continental growth. 
We must not mistake the fact that, in the chief 
articles of Protestant theology, the divines of Eng- 
land, not only Puritan, but all from Cranmer to 
Hooker and Andrewes, were nearer to the school of 
Calvin than any other. Arminianism does not ap- 
pear till the time of Laud ; and, even in the printed 
opinions of the ambassadors sent to the Council of 
Dort by James, there is a stout adherence to the 
supralapsarian scheme. I insist on this fact, because 
it proves the utter groundlessness of our Oxford the- 
orists, who claim from the first an Anglo-Catholic 
theology opposed to the Puritan Creed. The simple 
truth is, that the conflict was not at all a theological 
one at that time, but a conflict between a national 
Church and a Presbyterial polity, which had grown 
up in alliance with continental colonialism and been 
imported into England. The difference of theology 
was, so to say, a tone rather than a principle. Cal- 
vinism was, as a Church movement, based on a doc- 
trinal idea ; it developed it with an iron logic into 
a system. The genius of the English Churchman was 
not speculative ; and thus, from the first, there was 
less logic and more moderation in his doctrinal view. 
We have, then, in Hooker, the full evidence of this. 



210 Epochs in Church History. 

His theology must be gathered from his few sermons, 
and several striking passages of his Polity It is, in 
the main, that of Augustin. We too often forget, 
when we speak of Calvin as the author of those doc- 
trines of election, inability, effectual calling, so dom- 
inant at the Reformation, that it was Augustin who 
stamped them on the Church. Calvin only tore them 
asunder from the scholastic dogmas of mass and priest- 
hood fastened to them, and reshaped them. It is 
Augustin who is alike the master of Whitgift, Hooker, 
and the Swiss reformer. We have here the key to the 
differences of the English and continental theologians, 
as well as their agreement. Hooker follows the system 
of the great Latin teacher, yet it is always with the 
clear, practical thought of the jurist more than the 
subtle dialectician of the schools. No more condensed 
statement of the whole question of the Incarnation 
can be found than that in his fourth book on the 
Sacraments. His Christology is, again, that of Au- 
gustin, and entirely in accordance with Luther, Me- 
lancthon, and Calvin, although at this day so misun- 
derstood. He rejects the Thomist dogma of opus 
operatum in the Sacraments, yet holds an incorpora- 
tion with Christ, in his undivided humanity of soul 
and body, by which there is a grace begun in bap- 
tism and continued in the Eucharist. But of this I 
shall speak more fully when I examine his Church 
principles. In the cardinal points of the reformed 



Richard Hooker. 211 

doctrine, he is in entire harmony with the divines of 
the Continent. His view of justification is that of Lu- 
ther, and, in the clearest words, he rejects the the- 
ology which confounds it with sanctification. He 
maintains the doctrine of foreordination ; and, al- 
though with the double-edged paradox of the system 
he calls the reprobate self-doomed, but made to be 
self-doomed, there is no hint of any Arminian con- 
tingency. He holds the donum per sever antice as Gos- 
pel truth. But when we turn from these theological 
formulas of his time to the larger and more ethical 
judgments of Hooker, we find it was the practical 
wisdom, the moderation, the unfettered sense, that 
gave the Church of England its real difference from 
the theological sectary. What can be a truer posi- 
tion of Christian ethics than he lays down in the first 
Book of the Polity? ''They err, who think that of 
the will of God to do this or that, there can be no 
reason save His will." It recalls that noble sentence 
of Cudworth : " The root of all power is goodness." 
Or read this definition of the moral powers, as the 
antidote to the whole doctrine of necessity from Ed- 
wards to Bain : " Appetite is the will's solicitor, will 
is the appetite's controller." " There is in will that 
power, whereby it is apt to take or refuse any object 
which reason presents to it." " Evil as evil cannot be 
desired ; if that denied is evil, the cause is that good- 
ness, which is Or seemeth to be joined with it." In the 



212 Epochs in Church History, 

same philosophic spirit he allows the power and func- 
tion of reason in man, nor is there any clearer distinc- 
tion made by Locke or Leibnitz between a reasonable 
and a blind faith than by Hooker. " The law of rea- 
son is that which men have by discourse of natural 
reason found out themselves." "We seek for the re- 
vealed laws of God only in the Scriptures. Yet, al- 
though it contain all things necessary to salvation, it 
presupposes some things, of which we are already 
persuaded " by the light of natural knowledge. These 
few sentences are enough to show the tone of his 
theology. It is neither that of the extreme Calvinist, 
nor of the Anglo-Catholic ; it is nearer that of Chill- 
ingworth, Whichcote, and the rational thinkers of 
their day. And I can best close this part of my 
sketch by recalling the memorable battle with Trav- 
ers, which grew out of the sermon on "Justification." 
We cannot, indeed, look back without wonder at that 
race of preachers and hearers who could sit under an 
avalanche of exhortation for two or three hours, when 
all the characters of the Old Testament, from Noah 
to Daniel, and all the fathers were marshalled against 
the Pope, or the mystery of foreordination defended 
by the most learned absurdities of exegesis. Yet 
the royal Solomon of England, lords, and tradesfolk 
listened with unslacked thirst. It is the key to that 
singular clause in the Baptismal Service where spon- 
sors are warned, as their first duty to their god- 



Richard Hooker. 213 

children, to "call upon them to hear sermons." That 
age believed in the Christian life as a good flagella- 
tion, and it set thus early before the child the surest 
means of grace. Hooker is not free from this gift of 
tediousness. Yet amidst the wash of pulpit learning 
there are grand outbursts from the heart of the man. 
In this great sermon he sums the strife between 
Rome and the Reformers; he unmasks keenly the 
errors of Papal doctrine, and declares the principle 
of justifying faith as the ground of the true Church ; 
yet, with a large wisdom, he shows that theoretical 
error may not uproot essential faith in Christ, and 
that salvation is not to be denied to the papist. It is 
a sad yet wholesome proof of our gain, when we learn 
that such a sentiment, hardly refused now by the 
most fiery of Protestants, was attacked by Travers as 
pestilent heresy, and that Hooker was forced to de- 
fend himself before the archbishop. We read to-day 
with disgust the cruel cant of this man, who could 
consign to everlasting fires all, from the Fathers down- 
ward, not found quite orthodox in the article of justifi- 
cation. The whole breadth of the Church of England, 
the candor, the kindness, the "sweet reasonableness" 
of her creed, is embodied in that glowing sentence 
of her Master of the Temple: " Let me die, if it be 
ever proved that simply an error doth exclude Pope 
or cardinal from hope of life." 

We are now ready to read the great master work of 



214 Epochs in Church History, 

the man, and of the English Church. My wish has 
been to show beforehand the growth of such a mind 
amidst the social and religious elements of his time, as 
the preface to this study of the Ecclesiastical Polity. 
I cannot, of course, give more than the leading prin- 
ciples of it, so that you can see at a glance, as when 
you stand in the nave under the springing arches of 
Salisbury, the plan of the building. I have called 
Hooker the jurist of the Church. This is what dis- 
tinguishes him from the mere apologist. It is the first 
work in which any writer had attempted, instead 
of one-sided Church polemics, to show the historic 
structure of the Christian state, as embodied in the 
national faith and order. This treatise was the gift of 
his life and learning to the cause of unity in the most 
troublous times. If any will learn the real conflict, told 
with a style as tempered with an earnest sadness, a 
wit as free from bitterness as could be found in a work 
of that bitter day, let him carefully read the preface. 
I do not claim that he was without a prejudice, or 
that he made always fair allowance for the griefs of the 
Puritan. I shall frankly admit his defects in the course 
of my sketch. He was a hearty son and lover of the 
English Church. He was earnest to maintain what 
he believed to be its foundation principles as a na- 
tional growth. Yet in so doing he proves, as I have 
said all along, his thorough unity with the doctrines of 
the Reformation; and the admiration which he ex- 



Richard Hooker. 215 

presses for Calvin, even to the acceptance of his Pres- 
byterial polity in Geneva as valid in the churches of 
the continent, tells us at the outset the breadth of his 
view. Let us clearly understand from these writings 
of the time the real position of the Puritan and the 
Churchman. It is because it has been so often mis- 
conceived, alike by friends and foes, that the original 
breach has been widened till it has seemed impas- 
sable. Had the Puritan of that day only aimed at a 
larger liberty, instead of the uniformity in rites and 
ceremonies imposed by the Church ; had he only de- 
nied the undue power of the Bishops, or the real tyr- 
anny of the crown, his cause would have been just. 
There were many reforms needed to secure a true 
Reformation. But this was not his position. His 
ground was that, as the Word of God was the sole, 
supreme authority for Christian men, all offices of the 
Church, all rites or ceremonies, must be by the pre- 
script pattern of Scripture. Whatever was not thus 
prescript was untrue or anti-Christian. It followed, 
therefore, that not only the false tradition of Rome, 
but the prelacy, the ceremonial of the Church of Eng- 
land must be abolished as utter falsehood. Such a 
principle was not that of the Reformation. It was 
only that of one-sided theorists, and the larger part of 
the evils of Protestant sects has come from this mis- 
take. It led to that Bibliolatry which has made 
Scripture an apology for every narrow and rigid inter- 



216 Epochs in Church History. 

pretation of it. It was the ignoring of all Christian 
history. It led by another road to the same hier- 
archy it would destroy in Rome, the copy of an 
Old Testament theocracy, or the exact pattern of a 
primitive Church. The position of Hooker was the 
true ground of the Reformation. He maintained the 
Scripture as the sole authority in essential faith, but 
the right of the Church as a social body to make such 
laws and ceremonies as were needful for it, in so far 
as they were not contrary to God's word, or imposed 
as of divine, essential faith. It was the position of his 
own Church. It is the principle of sound reason, of 
true biblical criticism, of Church history. 

I shall, then, present first his great argument on 
this principle of law as it is treated in the first four 
books, and then his view of the specific features of 
the Church, its sacraments and rites, its ministry and 
its relation to the State. My analysis will be a brief 
one, and, as far as I can, such as to give his own lan- 
guage. I need not say that I commend you to a thor- 
ough study of him. At this day many find it a heavy 
book, and for these he did not write. Hooker is for 
thinkers only. It is the nature of Church authority 
he examines as based on reason and social law. Law 
is the principle " whereby the Eternal Himself doth 
work." " All things have some operation not violent 
or casual ; " and " the being of God is a kind of law to 
his working." This law is of several sorts, " of nature, 



Richard Hooker. 217 

of heavenly creatures, of reason ; and the last either 
divine or human." It is in this description of natural 
law the grand sentence comes, so often repeated by 
those who know nothing of him beyond it. But there 
is still another sentence, seldom quoted, yet probably 
the original of the famous saying of Sir Thomas 
Browne, "nature is the art of God." It is with a 
truer insight than our modern scientific boasters of 
law that he sees a Mind in this perfect order, and says, 
" these things which nature is said to do are by divine 
art performed." Human law is next analyzed with 
clear ethical skill. " There is in man, as an intelligent 
and moral being, the desire of the utmost good 
whereof his nature is capable." To discover this 
good there are two ways, knowledge of its causes, and 
observation of its tokens. The latter is more within 
our sphere. The most certain token is general per- 
suasion. " The general and perpetual voice of man is 
as the sentence of God himself." We have here the true 
philosophic idea of that law of Catholic authority which 
Vincent of Lerins and our Oxford divines have fossil- 
ized into tradition. It is the Catholic voice of reason 
itself. These laws of reason are such as " men have 
by discourse of natural reason found out themselves," 
" without help of revelation supernatural," as that God 
is to be worshipped, parents to be honored. It is on 
these society rests. No answer to the selfish scheme 
of Hobbes or our own sophists is truer than this 
10 _ 



218 Epochs in Church History. 

whole part of the book. The " natural desire of social 
life " is the fountain of government. Order begins, 
as the arch philosopher said, with the household, and 
as each parent was a king, so the kingdom was the 
first type of authority. Whatever in these laws is 
for the common good abides, because " corporations 
are immortal/' I cannot help thinking that Burke 
must have read this passage before he wrote his splen- 
did paragraph in the Reflections on the immortality of 
great social institutions as they are bequeathed from 
age to age. And I would call attention still more to 
a passage on the laws of nations which shows the 
marvellous insight of a Christian jurist, now the ideal 
of statesmen, of a principle then hardly dreamed of. 
It is in this principle of international, Catholic law he 
lays the authority of general councils. Nothing can 
show better the difference of the jurist from the eccle- 
siastic than this. 

With this rational and social view Hooker now 
passes to the question of supernatural law. I will 
not dwell on the noble ethics of his introduction, but 
seize the links of the reasoning. The revealed law of 
God is given us in Scripture. Yet, though it contain 
all things necessary to salvation, it presupposes some 
of which we are persuaded by our reason, e.g., the 
authority of Scripture itself. The light of natural 
reason is not excluded from our judgment of revealed 
truth. There are in Scripture traditions that make no 



Richard Hooker. 219 

part of its necessary, supernatural essence, nor are 
even some Apostolic rites beyond alteration. We 
must judge of the positive laws of Scripture " accord- 
ing to the matter concerning which they were made." 
" Laws, either natural or supernatural, which have no 
variable matter, belong forever ; but those for men or 
Churches, made such as the nature of the case may 
require them to be otherwise ordered afterward " 
may be changed. " The power of all societies is 
contained in the same societies." In this view Hooker 
now examines the " head theorem " of the Puritans. 
They held " that the Scripture of God is in such sort 
the rule of human action, that simply whatsoever we do 
and are not by it directed thereunto, the same is sin." 
He replies that much which Scripture does not prescribe 
is notwithstanding wise and good. " Some things 
wisdom openeth by the book of Scripture ; some by 
the glorious works of nature ; some she whispereth from 
above by spiritual influence ; in some she leadeth and 
traineth by worldly experience." He sums all with 
the rejection of all one-sided errors. " The schools of 
Rome teach Scripture to be insufficient, as if, except 
traditions be added, it did not contain all revealed, 
necessary truth to be saved." " Others grow into the 
dangerous extremity, as if Scripture not only contains 
all necessary, but to do anything according to any 
other law were unlawful." I have dwelt thus long on 
the line of Hooker's argument", because it is such a 



220 Epochs in Church History. 

masterpiece of national and impartial thought. It is 
as clear an appeal to right reason against the tradition 
of the Romish or Oxford Churchman as the literalism 
of the Puritan. A disciple of Pusey might well " stare 
and gasp " as he reads this sentence : " Although ten 
thousand general councils would set down any one, and 
the same definitive sentence concerning any point of 
religion whatever, yet one demonstrative reason al- 
leged, or one manifest testimony cited from the mouth 
of God Himself to the contrary, could not choose but 
overweigh them all, inasmuch as for them to have 
been deceived it is not impossible." 

It is now in accordance with this view of social law, 
that Hooker passes in his third book to the structure of 
the Church. He begins, in harmony with all the Re- 
formers, by the distinction between the ecclesia invisi- 
~bilis and visibilis ; but it will be seen at once how he 
takes the broad, Catholic ground, which divides him 
on either hand from the Roman hierarchy and the 
Puritan hierarchy of an elect theological sect. The 
mystical or invisible Church is one, but not known to 
us. The visible is one in outward profession of one 
Lord, faith, baptism. Its rule of faith is contained in 
the Apostles' Creed. Its entrance is by baptism. All 
baptized persons, according to Christ's own form of 
words, are members of the Church visible. This 
visible Church is not perfect ; it may contain heretics 
and men of bad life, as Christ allowed the wheat and 



RicJiard Hooker. 221 

tares to grow together till the harvest. All mistakes 
like that of the Donatists, who sought to create a 
Church of pure saints, come from confounding this 
mystical and visible body together. Undoubtedly 
Hooker laid his finger here on the radical defect of the 
Puritan movement. It was a conscientious effort of 
good men to realize in the Church the ideal of an 
elect, spiritual family ; and it could only end in a nar- 
row theological sect. The position of Hooker was the 
same as that of Augustin, and it agreed with that of 
the Continental Reformers. But it was, again, in this 
conception of the Church as a visible, imperfect body, 
that he found the true view of its unity as a Re- 
formed body. It was not a new Church, he answers, 
when Rome asked where the Protestant was before 
Luther; "To reform ourselves, is not to sever our- 
selves from the Church we were of before." He al- 
lows that " even with Rome, while we do not share 
her abominations, yet as touching the main points of 
Christian truth, it is of the family of Christ." It is 
very curious to observe the contradiction which he 
mentions here in the Church of Calvin, as it shows the 
Donatist tendency more fully developed in the Puri- 
tan. " The answer of Calvin to Paul," says Hooker, 
" is crazed," when he forbade baptizing an infant of 
Romish parents ; and against it he praised the college 
of Geneva, which " soundly overruled Knox " in say- 
ing, that " infants are beguiled of their rights " in 



222 Epochs in Church History. 

such case. Yet it is equally to be noted, how his view 
of the unity of the Church is as utterly distinct from 
the Anglo-Catholic as the Puritan. He does not find 
this unity in any primitive, Nicene age, still less in 
any exclusion of the Protestant Reformation, but in 
the very principle of the Church of Christ as essenti- 
ally one in all ages, and restored by the Reformation 
to its true Catholicity. This is the principle of a 
large Church history. 

It is this view of the Church that he applies to the 
whole vexed question of the right rule of Reformation. 
All may hold the necessity " of polity and regimen " 
without holding " one form necessary in all." " The 
Church Catholic hath a number of societies," yet it is 
one as " the main body of the sea is one, yet hath 
within divers precincts and divers names." " Matters 
of faith, necessary to salvation and sacraments, are 
contained in God's word. But matters of ceremony, 
order, Church government, are free if nothing against 
them be alleged from the Scripture." It is here that 
Hooker rises into one of those noble utterances which 
reveal the breadth of his theology. We may justly 
claim for the Puritan that he fought for freedom 
against an unwise uniformity, but we quite mistake 
when we call the spirit of his religious thought free 
or reasonable. He railed against the English Church 
for setting human reason above God's word, because 
it kept any custom of the past, from a Christmas feast 



Richard Hooker. 223 

or a collect to a wedding ring. He would enforce any 
strict interpretation of a Mosaic Sabbath law, or a 
hint about lay elders as grounded on the Word. 
Hooker, with keen logic, points out their contradic- 
tion, that " to quote some historical narration or 
other as if exact law " was to " add to God's law." 
And then he exclaims that it would seem " to be ripe 
in faith even to be raw in wit and judgment." " The 
star of reason and learning beginneth to be thought 
of as an unlucky comet, as if God had so accursed it 
that it should never shine in things concerning our 
duty to Him, but be esteemed as that star in the Rev- 
elation called Wormwood, which being fallen from 
Heaven maketh rivers and waters so bitter that men 
tasting them die thereof." " They never use reason 
so willingly as to disgrace reason." " But reason is of 
God. The self-same spirit which revealeth the things 
God set down in his law aids men in finding out by 
the light of reason what laws are expedient over and 
besides." A grand appeal against a narrow faith, 
worthy of the best intellect of the Church ; which I 
repeat not merely to show its truth against the Cart- 
wrights of that time, but the same railers in the guise 
of Oxford divinity to-day, who set Catholic faith 
against true learning, and never use reason save to 
disgrace reason ! And one more great sentence I 
must add, to be commended to all our traditional 
Churchmen, who will defend their Episcopacy or 



224 Epochs in Church History, 

worship by the same forcing process of Scripture as 
those Hooker rebuked. " If we did seek to maintain 
what most advantageth our cause, the very best and 
strongest were to hold even as they, that in Scripture 
there must needs be some particular form of the pol- 
ity God hath instituted, and which for that cause be- 
longeth to all churches and all times. But we are 
persuaded of nothing more than this, that no untruth 
can avail the patron and defender long ; and that 
things most truly are likewise most behovefully 
spoken." If such had been the fair and noble spirit 
in which the Church of England then and her cham- 
pions since had carried her historic claims, her broad 
principles, into her polity, the whole party of dissent 
would have melted into a loving unity. It is in this 
large spirit he closes the defence of the English Ref- 
ormation. Its law, he claims, is not divine, but 
mutable. Yet it is wise, and that is u a loose opinion 
of the Anabaptist that Christian liberty is lost if any 
law be imposed besides the Gospel." The Church 
had a just authority, and it is " no matter of indiffer- 
ence " if men obey. Each charge of the Puritan is thus 
met. It was the fling of Cartwright that the Church 
of England was half way in her reformation, and that 
" superstitions must be cured by their contraries." 
The reply of Hooker is with his own grave, keen 
humor. " He that will take away extreme heat by 
setting the body in extremity of cold, shall doubtless 



Richard Hooker. 225 

remove the disease, but with it the diseased too." 
We disallow all Romish ceremonies that are unprofit- 
able, not count all unprofitable that are Romish. If 
the Church of Rome say blasphemously that we can- 
not stand save by her ceremonies, the charge is the 
shoe of Hercules on a child's foot. Our ceremonies 
do not belong to this or that sect, but are the ancient 
rites of the Church of Christ. It is urged that the 
English Church should frame itself to the pattern of 
those who began Reformation. Hooker answers with 
Gregory, " In una fide nil afficit ecclesiae sanctae 
consuetudo diversa ; " and another weighty saying of 
Calvin that " in rites it sometime profiteth that there 
be difference, lest men think religion tied to outward 
ceremonies." " One family is not abridged of liberty 
to wear friars' grey, for that another doth wear clay 
color." The English Church, in altering her rites, 
thought but to change what could be without danger, 
leaving others to be abolished by disusage through 
trust of time. " True, no councils or custorns, never so 
ancient or general, can let the Church from taking away 
what is hurtful ; but the true rule is to keep customs 
till there be urgent cause to ordain the contrary." 

We have now so thoroughly analyzed the principles 
of Hooker, that we need to turn only to the chief 
points of the remaining books, especially his view of 
the sacraments and ministry. There is nothing 

in which he more truly gives us the reasonable historic 
10* 



226 Epochs in Church History. 

sense of the English Reformation, and the plain con- 
tradiction of its Anglo-Catholic pretensions. The fifth 
book begins with the whole question of Church cere- 
monies. It is his aim to show, in reply to the many 
criticisms of the Puritan, the sober ground on which 
the worship was reformed. I will not linger on them 
save to say that his principle, from first to last, as it 
affirms the right of the Church to keep anything 
which is true or good or beautiful in the past, is as 
distinct from a false or fantastic symbolism. It is 
the spirit of Christian art, of a sound conservatism, 
which does not forget the dependence of ail outward 
form on an inward piety. " It is not the cross on our 
foreheads, but in our hearts the faith of Christ, which 
as we grant most true, so neither do we despise, no, 
not the meanest help that aids toward the highest 
service." We owe to this wise judgment of the Church 
all that is best in the liturgy or worship we have 
inherited. No more curious proof can be found than 
in this book^of the one-sided iconoclasm of the Puritan, 
which attacked so many ceremonies that at this day 
would be thought of little moment — the surplice, the 
cross, the ring in baptism, the bowing in the creed, 
the chant and the Lord's Prayer. It merely proves 
how shallow are almost all the quarrels of any age, 
from that of Hooker to the solemn inquirers of our 
own as to the north end of the table or the color of a 
stole. Yet I am bound to say, while Hooker's princi- 



Richard Hooker. 227 

pie is sound, that without doubt the Puritan was right 
in many of his objections. It should have been the 
duty of the Church by Hooker's own rule not to 
enforce on all consciences what he allowed to be 
adia(popa. Our own experience has shown us that his 
apology for much in the English service was not proof 
against " disusage through trust of time." In the 
most striking case, that of the Athanasian Creed, our 
best historic criticism has shown it to be an uncatholic, 
unauthorized interpolation of a metaphysical age, 
unfit for Church worship ; and it has been wisely left 
out of the American Prayer Book. That it keeps its 
place in the English is proof of its adherence to 
Hooker's mistake, not his Church principle. 

But I must pass to the far more weighty point of 
Hooker's teaching as to the sacraments. I do not 
know any stronger instance of the way in which we 
have lost all true ideas of the Reformed theology of 
that time than the common mistake as to his view. It 
was far from that of the Romish or Anglo-Catholic 
school, and almost entirely one with the faith of Calvin. 
To understand it we must know the Christology of the 
Reformers on which their doctrine of sacramental 
grace rested. They had rejected the Thomist dogma 
of Rome, that of an opus operatum in the sacraments ; 
and held that their virtue lay in the direct operation 
of the divine Lord. But in giving up the school 
dogma they still retained the Christology of Augus- 



228 Epochs in Church History. 

tine. We have in the fifth book of Hooker the 
clearer statement of it. God has assumed man's 
nature in the person of Christ ; and thus, although the 
substance of Christ's body has only a local presence, 
there is a presence of his bodily with his spiritual 
humanity ; a presence not local, but of force and 
efficacy. It is thus, as his mystical body, we receive 
a participation, body and soul, with his life. Sacra- 
ments are hence the means of grace. They do not 
give the grace, for it can only be from the divine Word 
Himself. Yet they are not mere signs, but his own 
means of incorporation with our humanity. Such, I 
say, was the doctrine of all the Reformers, including 
Calvin. I do not, of course, maintain it, but simply 
explain it. It was not till a later day, with the new 
method of Descartes, that the received ideas of sub- 
stance and accident passed away ; and Luther, Melanc- 
thon, Hooker were realists of the school of Augustine. 
To us this notion of the real substance of Christ, divine 
and human, pervading body and soul, is simply the 
most unreal of abstractions. It belongs no longer to 
a reasonable theology. But we cannot understand the 
systems or sacramental theories of the Reformers, 
save by this key. 

If we apply this Christological view to baptism, 
we have the doctrine of Hooker. Baptism is the Sac- 
rament of regeneration in this sense, that it is the 
means through which the initiatory grace of Christ is 



Richard Hooker. 229 

given, body and soul. The grace is not in the ele- 
ment, or the water changed, as the Romish view 
affirms. It is in Christ, who conveys it. It is not, 
therefore, tied to the Sacrament, but unbaptized chil- 
dren and persons may receive this grace. The ancients 
are too prone to make the necessity of baptism more 
absolute than reason would. Yet it is not a mere 
outward sign. It is the appointed instrumentality 
of the new birth. Hooker thus defends the baptism 
of heretics or of lay persons, against the restriction 
made by the Puritan. Now, in this position, we have 
the crux of the whole question of baptismal regener- 
ation. His doctrine is precisely that of the Prayer 
Book and the reformed English Church. All its 
phrases of " mystical washing away of sin/' " receiv- 
ing remission," its assertion that " the child is regen- 
erate," are clear. But, as I said, it is just as truly the 
doctrine of Luther, of Bullinger, and the body of re- 
formers. Our Anglo-Catholics, in claiming that the 
Church differs from those communions and keeps the 
Catholic faith, simply shows its ignorance of history. 
Our Protestants who call the service Romanizing 
are equally ignorant. The difference lies simply here, 
that most Protestant communions, in giving up the 
use of their early liturgic forms, have not retained the 
original idea of regeneration, but have changed it into 
that of conversion ; while the English Church, in keep- 
ing its archaic service, has kept also the phrases be- 



230 Epochs in Church History. 

longing to the Augustinian Christology. We need 
not be perplexed by the baptismal service if we have 
learned not to identify the essential faith of the re- 
formers with a metaphysical notion of their time. 

If we turn to the doctrine of Holy Communion, 
we have the same key to the views of Hooker and 
the English Church of his day. It is the Sacrament 
which contains life ; and, with all the reformers, Cal- 
vin and Zwingli included, he holds it the means of a 
supernatural grace, not a barren sign. But he utterly 
rejects any idea of an objective presence in the ele- 
ments, which is the root of the Roman and the Oxford 
doctrine. " The real presence is not to be sought in 
the Sacrament, but in the worthy receiving of the Sa- 
crament." " The Sacraments really exhibit, but are not 
really, nor do really contain in themselves that grace 
which, by or with them, it pleases God to bestow." 
We have here the view of Augustin, and of the re- 
formers, both English and continental. And we have, 
just as in the Office of Baptism, the solution of those 
phrases which, in the English or American book, 
teach what is called the " real presence." The prayer 
that we may so eat and drink that " our sinful bodies 
may be made clean by His body," that "we may be 
made one body with Him," denotes the same idea 
of a participation by this Sacrament of the whole hu- 
manity of Christ, body and soul. Yet it is no pres- 
ence in the elements, which remain " creatures of bread 



Richard Hooker. 231 

and wine " after consecration, it is a presence of 
Christ to the partaker. I do not know any more 
groundless misinterpretation than that made by the 
Oxford divines to construe the eloquent sentences of 
Hooker, when he states the Catholic truth as the 
Eirenicon of varied confessions. The position of the 
Oxford divinity is that the modus of the presence is an 
undefined mystery. Now this is the very point re- 
jected by Hooker. He names the three interpreta- 
tions, that of Rome, of Luther, and of Calvin, and 
accepts the last as that which "hath in it nothing" 
but what the rest do all approve and acknowledge to 
be most true; that is, " this hallowed food, through 
concurrence of divine grace, is unto faithful receivers 
instrumentally a cause of that mystical participation, 
whereby I give them actual possession of all such 
saving grace as my sacrificial body can yield. This is 
to them, and in them, my body." The Oxford di- 
vinity, in accepting an undefined yet real presence in 
the elements, ends as logically in transubstantiation as 
the physiologist who says, " I know not how, only in 
some way the tissue thinks," ends in materialism. 
The theology of Hooker denies any grace, save in the 
personal Christ ; any presence, save to and in the 
receiver in the act of receiving. One point remains of 
most concern to us — the view of Hooker as to the 
Episcopate. It is the logical result of his Church 
principle. The Church is a body which, in its social 



232 Epochs in Church History. 

structure, has the right to make such laws and offices 
as it needs. There is no prescript form of govern- 
ment which is in itself unalterable or absolute. It is 
on this ground he maintains Episcopacy against the 
Puritan. The Puritan rejected prelacy as a human 
invention, and claimed that there was no right in the 
Church to go beyond the simplicity of the New Testa- 
ment pattern. Prelacy was anti christ. Hooker ex- 
amines the evidence ; he shows that the Church had 
such an order of superior officers, from Apostle to 
diocesan bishops, without break; and that the Eng- 
lish Church in keeping it has, therefore, kept historic 
precedent and venerable order. But he in no sense 
bases the fact on any divine law of Apostolic succes- 
sion. He does not claim the necessity of the Epis- 
copate to the being or integrity of the Church ; he 
freely allows that such churches as were by untoward 
circumstances organized without bishops, are author- 
ized to have a ministry suited to their needs. There 
can be no doubt of his view here. "Although some 
reformed Churches, the Scottish especially and French, 
have not that which best agreeth with Scripture, the 
government by bishops, I rather lament the defect 
than exagitate, since none without fault may be driven 
to erect that polity which is best." Yet more, he 
clearly affirms that this perpetuity of the order in no 
way destroys the supreme authority of the whole 
body. The power is in the Church to keep or modify 



Richard Hooker. 233 

or remove it. Should the Episcopate prove to be 
useless or despotic, it may be annulled. 

There can be no more crucial instance of the utter 
distance between the early reformers and the pre- 
tended exponents of Church principles. This was the 
ground of all, from Cranmer to the High Churchman 
of his time, Whitgift, and the two great champions, 
Hooker and Field. It is one of the most curious facts 
in history that the Anglican, who in that day simply 
defended Prelacy on the broad ground of historic fact 
against the narrow Puritan, has been replaced by the 
Anglo-Catholic, who takes the Puritan position that 
the exact pattern of Church polity must be given in 
Scripture, and that all else is invalid. Such are the 
paradoxes of Church history. 

But I cannot give a thorough idea of the great 
work of our jurist without at least a word on the sub- 
ject of his last book, The Royal Supremacy. To 
many it will seem a question of State policy. It is 
not so with this profound thinker, but rather he has 
anticipated the position maintained by the noblest 
reasoners of our day, like Rothe and Arnold. The 
argument of the Puritan at that time was not merely 
against the despotic acts of Henry or Elizabeth, nor 
even merely against the undue prerogative allowed to 
the monarch to interfere with the laws of the Church. 
Had it been this, his opposition would have been a 
most righteous one. It was precisely that which Arch- 



234 Epochs in Church History. 

bishop Manning has urged to-day, that the Church is 
a divine autonomy, and cannot admit any human 
supremacy. And it was against this that Hooker, 
with all the statesmen of his Church, maintained the 
claim of the national body. The supremacy of the 
king in his view is in no sense that of divine or abso- 
lute head. He is not rex supra ccclesiam, sed intra 
ccclesiam. The authority of the kingdom is that of 
law, and the Parliament is the legal representative of 
the nation, in union with the monarch. It is, then, 
the Church in its social and national relations which 
must be subject to the laws. The State is the same 
body of men in civic as the Church in religious mat- 
ters ; and there can be no such dualism as that of two 
separate, independent realms in one nation. Such is 
the theory of Hooker ; and whatever our views of the 
despotism of a Henry, or the secular Pontificate of 
Elizabeth, we must grant that it is a strong and wise 
defence of the principle of a national Church. We 
may deny the wisdom of an Establishment in America, 
but we can never forget that in England we are rea- 
soning not of our self-made institution, but of a 
national religion which had grown for centuries en- 
twined at its roots with the whole structure of the 
State. Its maintenance in the day of Hooker was 
essential. The supremacy of the throne meant the 
protest of the nation against the usurpation of the 
Papacy. It was this unity of Church and State which 



Richard Hooker. . 235 

saved Protestantism from the fate it met in France, 
and from the deadly feud of Germany with the em- 
pire. None can deny the evils mingled with it, its 
injustice toward dissenters, its effect on the spiritual 
life of the Church, its simony, its intolerance, its un- 
faithfulness to the national duty which alone gave it 
its rights. Yet we may safely say that it has remained 
because it was a historic growth, and could not pass 
away until it was outgrown. Nor can we doubt, 
whatever the future, that its thoughtful advocates to- 
day are among the most liberal of Churchmen and 
scholars, as wide apart as Gladstone, Stanley, Norman 
McLeod, Matthew Arnold, who uphold it because it 
is the cause of national culture, the safeguard of re- 
ligious freedom against ecclesiastical narrowness. It 
is not to be overlooked that the loudest declaimers 
against Erastianism are now the party of extremists 
in dogma and worship. 

I can only hope, in closing this sketch, that I have 
done somewhat toward the purpose, for which I have 
offered you the life and work of Hooker. It is not 
merely to linger as a devout scholar may do over a 
faded name, but because I believe that a knowledge of 
his principles will do more than the study of almost 
any of our early Churchmen to teach the character of 
the English Reformation and to decide the strifes that 
belong to our own time. We have strangely lost, 
within the last forty years, the plainest truths of that 



236 . Epochs in Church History. 

past history. It has become, the received opinion that 
while the first Reformers, like Cranmer and Hooper, 
may have been in unison with the Protestantism of 
the Continent, we have in Hooker, Andrews, and 
Laud the true founders of the Anglo-Catholic Church. 
If I have shown anything, it is that the position of 
Hooker is, in the principles of creed and polity, one 
with that of the earlier Reformers, and that the 
Church of his time, the period of its settled formation, 
is severed in its whole view of theology, worship, minis- 
try, by an impassable chasm from that which our 
modern school of Oxford claims. I might go much 
further, for I am sure that a study of all from Andrews 
to Thorndike, who have been absurdly styled ''Anglo- 
Catholic fathers," will simply prove that there was 
never any such system save in the brain of Oxford 
relic-hunters ; that there is the widest difference in 
so-called Church principles between them, and that at 
best they represent one period of dull scholastic intel- 
lect and stiff reaction in the history of the English 
Church. But it is enough to plant the evidence on 
the nobler ground of Hooker's time. Let me gather 
our conclusions and place them side by side with the 
pretensions of the party which calls itself the Church. 
The one holds the law of the Church to be based on 
the nature of a social commonwealth, and inherent in 
the whole body ; the other rests it on the unity of an 
outward tradition, interpreted by its ecclesiastical 



RicJiard Hooker. 237 

heads. The one holds the Protestant Reformation to 
be the true historic step in the progress of the Church 
and would only preserve the continuity of the body 
with the real life of the past ; the other plants itself on 
a fancied Catholic age before the Papacy, and rejects 
the Reformation as a failure. The one holds the 
supremacy of God's word, and denies the infallibility 
of even general councils ; the other rests on the de- 
crees of Nice as concurrent with Scripture and ulti- 
mate authority. The one retains the Episcopate as 
of historic worth; the other rejects the validity of all 
other orders. Such is the contest. It is plain to any 
student of the facts. It will be seen in due time, 
when the idols of the cave are broken, the one-sided 
learning, the false reverence, which have misled so 
many from the solid ground of the English fathers. 
We need not mourn over the years of blind strife 
through which the Church has been compelled to pass 
in order to reach the result. It is the law of history. 
The national body was doomed to expiate, by the dis- 
sent of thousands of her most conscientious sons, by 
her own feuds, by an age of secular stagnation, and at 
last by these forty years of deadly reaction, her un- 
truth to her own principles. But the trial is already 
nearing the end. It is enough for us, who live in the 
transition time, to know that we are no destructives, 
but heirs of their work who laid the ground plan, and 
have left to us to finish what no age could more than 



238 Epochs in Church History, 

begin. If my sketch do somewhat to help you to 
read for yourselves the great jurist whom I claim as 
the head Churchman of his generation, and in whom 
I am proud to find my Apostolic succession, I can do 
no better service for all Christian scholars. 



THE AIM AND INFLUENCE 

OF 

BIBLICAL CRITICISM. 

AN ADDRESS GIVEN AT THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
OF THE DIOCESE OF VIRGINIA. 

JUNE 25, 1879. 



ADDRESS. 

YOU have asked me, brethren of the Alumni, to 
give you an essay on Biblical Criticism. I do so with 
more than common pleasure, because I feel that your 
interest in such a subject is the proof of an underlying 
Christian life in this old and honored school. It is not, 
however, easy to choose what branch of the large ques- 
tion I should bring before you. I think that I should 
better meet the wants of all, if, instead of a mere theo- 
retical view, I should speak of it in its real bearings, as 
it is linked with the growth of Christian learning, and 
the special problems of our own time. My topic, then 
is the Aim and Influence of Modern Biblical Criticism. 
And if, indeed, I can so handle it as to show you that 
this ripest knowledge leads not to a merely critical 

239 



240 Epochs in Church History. 

result, but to the upbuilding of a positive and more 
abiding faith in the Gospel of our Lord, I shall have 
fulfilled my earnest wish. 

No feature of our time has more meaning for the 
Christian scholar than that of the new life, which has 
been poured into all studies bearing on the Scriptures. 
Biblical science maybe called, indeed, one of the ripest 
outgrowths of the last half century. We can never 
forget the great periods of the past, when masters like 
Bengel gave a fresh impulse to sacred letters, or a 
school of Hebraists like the elder Lightfoot was to be 
found in England. Yet if we compare our wealth to- 
day, in every path of biblical learning, with the scanty 
literature of forty years ago, we may have some idea 
of the gain. I need not dwell on the influence which 
the larger knowledge of Oriental languages and history 
has had on the study of the Old Testament ; the rich 
researches into its early annals, its literature, its later 
growth, and, above all, the obscure time from the de- 
cline of the hierarchy of Ezra to the day of Christ. 
Nor has the advance been less in the knowledge of the 
sources of the New Testament. A flood of light has 
been thrown on the structure of the Gospels, and the 
connection of the apostolic history with the half-known 
period just after it. It is not only in the scholarship 
of the Continent we find this life, but we may safely say 
that there has never been in England so thorough and 
manifold a range of learning. 



The Aim and Influence of Biblical Criticism, 241 

Yet there is a deeper cause than the general growth 
of letters for this zeal in biblical study. It is owing to 
the change in the whole culture of the time from mere 
abstract pursuits to the real sphere of history and scien- 
tific research. The once-absorbing influence of our 
theological methods has given place to criticism." I 
am far from the belief that this shows in any sense the 
decay of sound doctrine. I hold the very opposite. 
Theology must always have its high rank, because its 
truths awaken the highest thoughts of men. But it 
must find its work in the living atmosphere of the time, 
not merely repeat the strifes of a past metaphysics, 
with which we have as little to do as with the theory 
of phlogiston. Our scholars have begun to learn that, 
in a day when Baur and Renan are dissecting apostolic 
history to prove that the bulk of St. Paul's epistles are 
of later date, it is fruitless to fight over the remains of 
the Calvinistic and Arminian battle-field. Christian 
inquiry is, therefore, leading us to the sources. This 
is the open secret of the change from the theological 
to the critical spirit. Had I space, I should be glad to 
recall in the history of Protestant thought the ear- 
lier cases of the same striking fact. Protestantism it- 
self was this appeal from the scholastic systems to the 
Bible ; and its first years were marked by the growth 
of critical learning. The commentaries of Calvin were 
for his time a model, yet he was only one in the host 
of scholars. It was wnen in its turn the living faith of 



242 Epochs in Church History. 

Luther had been embalmed in a formal theology, that 
Bengel opened anew the page of the Gospels ; and its 
fruit was the revival of a more spiritual belief as well 
as a sounder criticism. But I can only glance at this 
history to grasp its principle. We may thank God for 
the quickening power of the Reformation, which com- 
pels us, in spite of the tendency at times to drift to- 
ward a dogmatic infallibility, always to return to that 
study of the open Word given as our birthright. 

Such I hold, to be the aim of our modern learning. 
There are many, indeed, to whom it means only the 
brilliant unbelief of German schools ; who are sore 
afraid of all researches into the date of our earth ; who 
shudder at the name of comparative religion, and would 
think it a blessing if no officious Tischendorf had un- 
buried the Sinaitic MSS., to help on the perilous work 
of a revision. But it is folly to mistake the passing 
errors of a time for its real growth. If I cannot set 
right such incurables, I may yet hope to convince some 
clearer minds that the gain is greater than the loss, and 
the result sure of a more living faith in the Christian 
revelation. We are to find our unity, amidst the dis- 
cords of opinion, in the sources of divine truth. We 
go backward from the seven mouths of the historic 
Nile, and trace the turbid tide through the desert 
or the strip of green plain it has watered, until we 
reach the fountain-head. This is the purpose of my 
essay. I shall endeavor to show the principle of a 



The Aim and Influence of Biblical Criticism. 243 

true biblical criticism, its influence on theological in- 
quiry, on our view of Church history, above all on the 
growth of a more real Christianity in the life of the 
time. 

Let us ask, as the first step in this treatment of the 
subject, what we mean by biblical science ; for to most 
minds, and not seldom to the clerical mind, it is an 
unknown quantity. The study of the Bible means to 
one the ecclesiastical tradition which he calls the voice 
of the Church, to another the theological system which 
he calls the Gospel ; yet in either case it may be with- 
out any clear critical principle. We mean, then, by 
biblical science, simply the application to the Scrip- 
tures of the methods which govern us in all thorough 
interpretation. It is, indeed, our starting-point as 
Christian scholars, that the sacred books are our su- 
preme and sole authority in matters of faith, and 
" contain all truth necessary to salvation." Nor when 
we speak of criticism, do we at all imply that a mere 
scientific or literary study can give us that deeper 
knowledge of the divine truth, which alone can make 
it the Word of God. Far from it. This Word may 
speak to the mind and heart of a Christian reader, al- 
though he knows nothing of the methods of exact 
learning ; and if the keenest criticism do not approach 
it with special reverence for a book which has fed the 
spiritual life of men as no other has done, it will be 
barren indeed even for the scholar. But we are not to 



244 Epochs in Church History. 

confound the authority of its divine truth with the au- 
thority of any human systems of interpretation. As 
a book written in Hebrew and in provincial Greek, 
given in the historic form, its meaning, so far as it 
touches on any points of language, history, science, 
literature, can only be reached by an open criticism. 
Any theory that forbids or e /ades this is not only fatal 
to science, but to revelation itself. The authority of 
the church is valid, in that it preserves our unity in 
the essential truth of Christ, but it can never pronounce 
its decree on those questions which, in the nature of 
the case, are within the fields of a growing knowledge. 
If it do this, it has denied the supremacy of the Word, 
and affirmed the Romish dogma of a human infalli- 
bility. Biblical science, then, is simply the science of 
right reason and moral honesty. There is nothing ar- 
bitrary in its methods. The principle of induction 
which it follows is the key of all sure knowledge. It 
is thus that a genuine science has gained its wonderful 
results in the domain of nature, because it no longer 
reasons from preconceived theory, but begins with 
facts, and verifies them. The science of language has 
thus laid its firm groundwork in our time, in tracing 
the structural growth of manifold forms of speech to 
their common roots. Modern history has achieved 
every triumph in the same way since Niebuhr sifted 
the Roman legends. It must be so, therefore, with 
the study of the Scriptures, if we can claim any just 



The A im and Influence of Biblical Criticism. 245 

principles of criticism at all. Such a task, of course, 
is a most varied one. It must begin with the structure 
of the whole, and pass to the examination of each 
part ; it must involve the question of primeval man, 
of early religions, the phases of Hebrew growth, and 
the transition to the age of the Gospels with the form- 
ation of the Christian Church. Yet the same critical 
canon runs through all our study. History, points of 
science, poetry and theology are judged by their own 
plain meaning, and verified by the impartial tests of 
science. 

It must be clear, then, that such a critical study 
could only, as with all science, reach its sure results in 
a gradual growth. The divine truth of Christ abides 
unchanged alike in its substance, and in its real influ- 
ence on the life of believers. But the exposition of 
the written Word is in its nature a human knowledge, 
which must pass through its earlier and crude methods. 
Any one, familiar with the history of Biblical interpre- 
tation, knows the fact of such a growth since the day 
of Origen ; and yet few have recognized in the very 
steps of the process a sure law. The modern ration- 
alist will sneer at the use of the word science in regard 
of Scriptural study ; but our true answer, as the de- 
fenders of the faith will do well to know, is just this, 
that it has only kept pace with all science in its mis- 
takes or its gains. The simplest laws of knowledge are 
always the latest. Alchemy must precede chemistry ; 



246 Epochs in Church History, 

astronomy must grope its way through the fancies of 
the astrologer ; and philology, even to the day of 
Home Tooke, was a system of ingenious guesswork. 
And I can, therefore, take no better mode of showing 
the results of biblical science than by a brief historic 
sketch. 

It was, then, natural that in its growth toward a 
sound method of interpretation the Church should 
pass through certain steps of development, which I 
may sum up under the heads of the mystical and the 
dogmatic principles. My aim is to show how each 
sprang out of the character of the time, and how, in 
this view, we know alike the truth and the crude error. 
It was, first of all, by the Christian Fathers, in the 
time when there was a deep spiritual insight into the 
truth of revelation, but little critical knowledge of his- 
tory or language, that the mystical principle was estab- 
lished. The system was an inheritance from the 
Jewish schools. It had developed in two directions.* 
In the schools of Palestine there was a stricter study 
of the letter ; but the Old Testament was regarded as 
a book of occult wisdom, in which the Rabbis hunted 
for a mystery beneath each vowel-point. In the schools 
of Alexandria the Greek culture led to a far freer, 
speculative method. We can never understand the 
early Fathers, unless we read the works of Philo, the 



* Nicolas, " Hist, des Doctrines Relig. d. Juifs," pt. i., ch. 1. 



The Aim and Influence of Biblical Criticism. 247 

earlier master of symbolic wisdom. It was his aim to 
idealize the anthropomorphic features that were in 
conflict with his Platonic ideas, and to bring out the 
loftier truth of revelation. Every chapter of Genesis 
is transformed into the most arbitrary fancies, and not 
a vestige of literal narrative is left. 

Such was the method that passed into the literature 
of the Church. We have in Origen the noblest scholar 
of his age, a statement of the principle on which the 
Christian study of the Bible should rest. " Because 
the Scriptures are written by the Spirit of God, they 
have not only a manifest sense, but one hidden from 
many." In accordance with the received division of 
body, soul, and spirit, he therefore claims three senses 
or interpretations ; the literal for the vulgar mind, the 
allegorical for the early, childish stage of belief, and 
the spiritual for the spiritual. * It is true that all the 
fathers were not such mystics in their exposition as 
Origen, yet all held the same idea of the Scriptures. 
Neander has said that the school of Antioch was of a 
far soberer learning, and has contrasted again the more 
practical teaching of the early Roman fathers with 
that of the Greek. Yet this criticism seems to us 
hardly to touch the real point. We trace in the Chris- 
tian expositors, as in the Hebrew, the two tendencies 
to the more symbolic method of Philo and the more 

* Origen, itzpi apxoor, lib. iv., 5, 12. 



248 Epochs in Church History. 

literal of Palestine ; but both had the same notion of 
an occult wisdom to be found by a subtle interpreta- 
tion. The truth of the Christ and his spiritual 
Gospel, which only could give the key to the Old 
Testament, was indeed a profound one. But instead 
of studying it in the clear method of history, the 
Bible was made a sacred anagram ; the most natural 
facts of Jewish worship or chronicle became arbitrary 
figures of the new dispensation. Type and allegory 
were the master-key that unlocked ail the dark cham- 
bers, from the early chapters of Genesis to the poetry 
of David or the grand utterances of Isaiah. Wherever 
we turn to the fathers, to the epistles of Clement or 
the sober Irenseus, to Tertullian, who finds the type 
of baptism in the Spirit brooding on the waters and 
in the passage through the Red Sea ; or to Augustine, 
who explains the six creative days as symbols of the 
ages of divine history, we have the numberless cases 
of this style of exposition. We prize the early Chris- 
tian writers for their intellectual and spiritual power 
in the great conflict of the faith with a Pagan wisdom ; 
nay, we can often admire with Coleridge the rich, de- 
vout fancy glowing through the homilies of Augustine ; 
but as Biblical scholars all were simply of a time when 
true criticism was hardly known. 

It was from this source, then, that the mystical 
method passed into the Latin Church of later times. 
Nor is it strange that it should remain there. It is 



The Aim and Influence of Biblical Criticism. 249 

indeed the best proof to-day of its incapacity of a 
sound Biblical learning, that Newman* in his essay on 
development claims, as one of the notes of the Catho- 
lic faith, the canon of mystical exegesis. The Bible 
becomes, by the " fourfold method " of its doctors, 
topical, allegorical, analogical, and anagogical ; a kalei- 
doscope, in which the disjointed bits of Scripture can 
be shaken into any shape of doctrine. That method 
has never, indeed, been so reduced to system by earlier 
Or by later Protestant expositors. Luther laughed at 
the fourfold division. It is to the honor of the Eng- 
lish Church that her best translator of the New Tes- 
tament, Tyndale, has stated the true principle most 
clearly : " Understand that Scripture hath but one 
sense, and that the literal sense. That is the root and 
ground of all, whereunto, if thou cleave, thou canst 
never err ; and if thou leave the literal sense, thou 
canst not but go out of the way."f Few will to-day 
adopt the canon of Cocceius, that the more senses 
which can be drawn out of Scripture the better. Few, 
who turn to the Kabbala of Henry More, will not 
wonder at the allegorizing a learned Hebraist could 
indulge in. Yet it is the defect of far too much 
of our exposition. It has turned plain history into 
prophecy. It mars the real learning of a scholar like 



* "Development of Christ. Doct.," chap, vi., 5, 1. 
f Tydnale, " Obedience of a Christian Man," p. 304. Parker ed. 
11* 



250 Epochs in Church History, 

Hengstenberg. We have it in one shape in our Angli- 
can divines, who quote any ingenious conceit of the 
fathers, and can turn the scarlet cord of Rahab, or the 
ephod of the high-priest into a type of the Christian 
priesthood. We have it again in the evangelical school 
of men like Simeon, who declaim against Ritualism, 
but follow the same symbolism in the interpretation 
of the Old Testament. Let us state the true prin- 
ciple, that none may mistake our meaning. All Chris- 
tian scholars will admit typical features in the Hebrew 
worship, and prophetic passages which clearly point 
to the Christ of the New Covenant. But all such 
figurative portions are intelligible as such. If our 
typology be made to turn any natural fact or incident 
into a mystic meaning, it robs the Scripture of its 
whole historic truth. Nothing has done greater wrong 
to the Word of God than the exegesis which has built 
a fanciful Christology out of any plain psalm of David, 
or any rite of the temple worship. It has not only 
been the source of every fancy, but it has led to much 
of that dishonest spirit which " palters with us in a 
double sense." We recognize at once its unsoundness 
in the fantastic system of Swedenborg, who found in 
Scripture, as Origen did, a threefold meaning — literal, 
spiritual, and celestial ; yet it is hard to know why 
three senses are not as reasonable as two. We may 
excuse the early methods of the fathers ; but it is 
astounding to-day, when a Christian scholar forces on 



The Aim and Influence of Biblical Criticism. 251 

the Word of God that style of exposition. Criticism 
can admit no such mystical canon. It bows in rev- 
erence before the spiritual mysteries of revelation ; 
but it will not distort its plain truth by the guesswork 
of a human fancy. 

We can now pass to the second marked feature in 
the history of Biblical interpretation, which I have 
called the dogmatic principle. It was undoubtedly a 
step forward when the mystic and fanciful spirit gave 
place to the unity of system, as it had developed in the 
Latin Church. The law which reigned in the exegesis 
of its schools was the analogia fidei. Now there is as- 
suredly a unity of truth in the Scriptures, a doctrinal 
basis, by which we may study the meaning of its sev- 
eral parts. But the abuse of the principle lies, first, 
in forgetting that the Bible is given in no scientific 
form, but in history, poetry, gospel, and epistle. If 
theology change its natural expression into logical 
proof-texts, it destroys the whole character of revela- 
tion as a living history. But it is yet worse when it 
substitutes for the true analogy of faith the later dog- 
matic system of one age, and so interprets the ideas of 
St. Paul, or the truth of Christ's own Gospel, by the 
controversial dialect of the schools. It was precisely 
this style of exegesis which became the fixed method 
of the Latin doctors. All the living pages of the New 
Testament were used to sustain the definitions of the 
scholastic metaphysics that had grown since Augustine. 



252 Epochs in Church History. 

Every dogma, like that of the supremacy of Peter, or 
the transubstantiation of the elements, could have its 
scriptural texts, torn from their real connection. There 
could be no criticism in such a method. It was against 
this scholastic abuse that Protestantism declared the 
supremacy of Scripture. Luther touched the very 
point when he rejected the analogic/, ftdei, and claimed 
the analogia Scriptures sacrce. This pretended rule 
of faith was, in his quaint phrase, "a rover and a 
chamois-hunter." 

And it is this false dogmatic tendency in the inter- 
pretation of the Bible, which a true criticism must 
correct in Protestant as well as Roman scholasticism. 
We need not gather the examples of it to convince 
any clear-sighted scholar. The habit of citing dis- 
jointed texts of Scripture as proofs of doctrine has 
often led to the worst sophistry. Poetry has been 
hardened into logical proposition, and the language 
of a familiar letter been wrested from its simple mean- 
ing. Many a discourse on reprobation has been rung 
out of the Hebrew phrase, " The Lord hardened 
Pharaoh's heart ; " the natural outburst of the Psalm- 
ist, " Behold, I was shapen in wickedness," has been 
tortured into a theological statement of total de- 
pravity ; and the most unscriptural dogmas have been 
defended as holy mysteries by the verse, " Thou art a 
God that hidest thyself." But these are only scattered 
instances. We may well say that almost all the great 



The Aim and Influence of Biblical Criticism. 253 

controversies are simply colossal proofs of the same 
vice. If we read the Epistle to the Romans by the 
light of real criticism, it has nothing to do with our 
metaphysics of divine decrees, but it speaks of the 
grand catholic fact of the calling of all as redeemed 
in Christ, instead of a small pedigree of circumcised 
Jews ; yet its sense has been lost by the two equally 
mistaken schools of Calvin and Arminius. If we take 
the whole question of baptismal regeneration, the 
simple word of Christ to Nicodemus, declaring a king- 
dom of more spiritual gifts than John taught in bap- 
tism by water, has been looked at through the sacra- 
mental theory of the scholastic. Stanley has lately 
shown that the classic text for absolution in the 
Gospels is no more than the mistaken phrase of the 
Rabbis, who meant by "binding and loosing" the 
action of their courts of law. It is so with the treat- 
ment of the Scripture on every side. Its real unity 
and harmony must be found by an honest criticism of 
its own pages, not an artificial system. Nor need we 
wonder, when it has been so often distorted by dog- 
matic methods, that a keen thinker, like Mr. Matthew 
Arnold, should try to exclude all its doctrine, and 
treat it as a literature which has in it only a moral 
element. If we will meet this brilliant paradox, we 
must accept its partial truth, and show that we do 
not confound its teaching of the personal, living 
God, its real history and real poetry, with either 



254 Epochs in Church History. 

his barren ethics or our former modes of interpre- 
tation. 

Our view of biblical science can now be clearly un- 
derstood. It has been a growth out of these crude 
but natural stages to a riper method. What, then, is 
the change which a later criticism has introduced ? 
Simply the correction of such arbitrary rules, and the 
study of the Scriptures in their own direct meaning. 
Nothing of their truth has been lost in the process. 
The spiritual, the mysterious in the revelation of God 
is as fully recognized, although the mystical principle 
is not forced on its plain history. The doctrinal truth 
is not forgotten, because Scripture is not studied as if 
it were a treatise of systematic divinity. In a word, 
modern biblical science is nothing else than the 
method which by degrees has grown out of the more 
thorough analysis of its language, structure, and 
design. In that view I will sum the results of this 
critical study, as it concerns the character of the Bible 
itself, before I proceed to its influence on theology 
and Church polity. It would be interesting, in a fuller 
sketch, to speak of the rich evidence which our 
researches into the history and archaeology of the 
East have given to many of the facts of Scripture. 
We have far more reason to trust than to fear the 
results of science. But my task is not so much with 
the literature of the subject as with the principles of 
criticism. The first result of such study, then, in 



The Aim and Influence of Biblical Criticism. 255 

teaching us to examine its real structure, is to give us 
the true idea of the unity and design of Revelation. 
The Bible is not to a Christian scholar, as it has been 
too often regarded, a book of arbitrary teachings on all 
problems of doctrine, or natural science or morals. It 
is given for the revelation to man of the one grand fact 
of a personal, living God in human history ; and we 
study his word, not as we do a systematic treatise, but 
in its living form. 

If in such a light we turn to the Old Testament, we 
have the record of a nation, the development of the 
national life from its patriarchal beginnings to its 
Mosaic legislation, its kingdom, and its later sacerdo- 
tal state. Its chronicle has on it the stamp of all early 
writing, from a period of crude ideas of nature and 
man, from a childlike style of history to a later and 
clearer knowledge. Its social morality has the natural 
growth from polygamy, slavery, and heroic barbarism 
to the milder type of civilization. Yet there is no less 
the evidence of a divine character throughout the 
whole record. It is this very criticism which enables 
us to see this wonderful and unique feature. The 
knowledge of one God, Creator and Lawgiver; the 
pure ethical teaching of the Mosaic code ; the social 
and religious fabric built on it, and abiding through 
all the epochs of the national growth in sharpest con- 
trast with the idolatry and vice of the people ; th 
Providential history amidst the changes of the outer 



256 Epochs in Church History. 

world, all these stamp on the record the indelible 
proof of a supernatural design. Even the keenest 
criticism confesses this fact. The admission of Arnold 
of the moral supremacy of this religion is the best 
answer to his absurd denial of a personal God in 
Jewish history. And it is precisely this result of our 
criticism which gives us the ground of agreement 
with the just demands of science or historic study. 
We deny by the most scientific proofs the a priori 
theory of all who reject the divine origin of such a 
revelation. But we need not, with this knowledge of 
its essential truth, have any perplexity as to the ques- 
tions geology may ask of the Mosaic cosmogony, or 
historic criticism as to the structure of the Penta- 
teuch. If there be any who hold that all these details 
can be squared with science, we leave them to the test 
of honest criticism. All we demand is, that the de- 
fence of revelation shall not be endangered by resting 
it on any questionable ground. And still more, in 
regard of the morality of the Old Testament, we are 
no longer perplexed by the barbarity of a Jael, or the 
slaughter of the Canaanites, or the sins of David. We 
do not look in the earlier time for that pure social 
spirit which only the teaching of the Gospel could 
give. It is a far higher reverence we pay, when we 
thus learn its divine truth, yet recognize in it a faith- 
ful record of the growth of Israel, as fully in its 
mental and moral stages as in its childlike ritual. We 



The Aim and Influence of Biblical Criticism, 257 

know its meaning as the education of a race for a per- 
fect Christianity. Such is the method which our best 
scholarship has carried into the treatment of the Old 
Testament ; and whatever may be the differences 
between the brilliant, often over-ingenious, researches 
of Ewald, and more sober scholars like Bleek, the 
method has wrought the most real results. Its history 
is history ; its poetry is poetry. Its prophecy is in- 
terpreted by the great historic law of connection 
between a preparatory religion and that of Him who 
is the " fulness of times," as we see the fruit in the 
seed. The Old Testament is a far more living book, 
since it has become no longer a volume of allegories, 
but is studied in its real structure. 

If we turn now to the book of the New Covenant, 
we have the like method. As we open the Gospels 
and learn their formation, it is the person and life of 
Jesus Christ, the kingdom he established, which we 
see in the record of living history. Each of these four 
biographies reveals to us the character of that Jewish 
time, the ideas of a Messiah and a Messianic reign ; 
and we trace in their differences the varied points of 
view in which the same wonderful person appeared 
to those who saw and heard him. Yet it is here we 
find the real unity of the books. It is not that of a 
mechanical work of art, or of a dogmatic treatise on 
the creed and polity of the kingdom of Christ ; but Ave 
see it as it speaks in the incarnate wisdom of the Son 



258 Epochs in Church History, 

of God, and as his truth shapes itself into the common 
faith of believers. All these portraits agree in the 
great features of his character ; all unite in the sub- 
stantial facts of his teaching and mission. It is 
the invaluable fruit of such criticism, that it has 
taught us to find more than a formal repertory of 
proof-texts in the Gospels. The divinity of Christ, 
his redeeming sacrifice, his gift of the Comforter, are 
no longer theories, but realities, which we know more 
truly in their historic meaning. We have no difficulty 
in regard to the lesser discrepancies of the narrative. 
His life is greater than all books. And it is here we 
have the best answer to all modern errors. I cannot 
more clearly illustrate my meaning than by a reference 
to a weighty question of our day. It is the effort of 
the school of which Renan is the expositor, to under- 
mine the authority of the fourth Gospel ; and the 
strength of his objection lies in its difference from the 
whole tone of the Synoptics, which marks it in his 
eyes as the work of a later, more speculative time, 
instead of the simpler Jewish teaching of a Matthew. 
Yet the very study of the Gospels in connection with 
the mind of their time reveals the fact, that the lofty 
truth of the word of God is to be found not merely in 
Platonic or Alexandrian sources, but in the doctrinal 
faith of Palestine.* The Logos of the fourth Gospel 

* Nicolas, " Hist. d. doctr. d. Juifs," p. ii. ch. 2. 



The Aim and Influence of Biblical Criticism. 259 

is no more a later conception than the Messiah and 
Prophet whom the Synoptics portray. We recognize 
in the more spiritual insight of St. John, or the more 
simple page of St. Matthew, the same divine man ; 
yet in the last of the Gospels we see the transition 
from the Jewish faith to the more perfect truth of the 
Word made flesh. If we thus read the harmony of 
the book, we need fear no verbal criticism. 

But, again, the same method has opened the unity 
of the Apostolic history. Any who recalls the " Plant- 
ing and Training of the Church," by Neander, one of 
the first essays in this line,, will not forget the clue it 
gave to the tangled web of exposition. It has been 
the task of the best scholars since to study in those 
epistles, so varied in tone of thought, their living con- 
nection with the growth of the early body. Criticism 
has modified the old notion of a Harmonia Ev angelica, 
such as Bishop Bull wrote. We can no longer quote 
that age as if it were one of full-grown theology and 
Church polity. But as we read there the long strife 
of Jewish and Gentile opinion ; as, above all, we trace 
in St. Paul the constructive idea of the time, that 
question of law and grace, of a narrow tradition and 
a Christian faith, which must be settled for the unity 
of the growing Church, we gain a real knowledge. It 
has taught us to find in these epistles all the steps of 
that first formative age through these mental and 
moral struggles toward an organic life. This is our 



260 Epochs in Church History. 

positive fruit. And if such a criticism has shaken the 
validity of a few minor epistles, if we do not now 
quote the Apocalypse as a literal prediction against 
the Papacy, we have learned more surely the substan- 
tial wholeness of the canon. It is this very study 
which, in showing us the formation of the earlyChurch, 
answers the latest rationalism. Its whole fabric rests 
on the assumption that the differences of the epistles, 
the Gnostic allusions, the sharp strifes of Jewish and 
Gentile ideas, prove a later origin. Such an array might 
well stagger our traditional interpreters. But if we 
have read truly the character of that age, we have found 
in it the germs of all the after-errors, and have learned 
that out of the battle came the unity of the body. 

But I cannot dwell longer on the detail of the 
method. It is enough if I have shown what such 
criticism means. Nor will it be necessary for me to 
touch at length on any of the theoretical questions so 
often mingled with this subject. I have not consid- 
ered the doctrine of inspiration. If this whole line 
of reasoning be clear, it will place that question on its 
real ground ; for it will show that a genuine criticism 
gives us a conviction of the divine worth of the Bible, 
far stronger than all others. All theories of mechani- 
cal dictation or verbal infallibility were the natural 
product of the mystical and dogmatic methods. If 
we have learned the method of a true criticism, we 
know the inspired, essential truth of the Word ; and 



The Aim and Influence of Biblical Criticism. 261 

if we have not. so learned it, no theory will help us 
against the attacks of a false learning. But it would 
be a better evidence of what I have said, and a better 
answer to those who look doubtfully on the growth of 
biblical science, if I had space to add a sketch of its 
results. I can only sum it in a few words, and I shall 
take my example from that country where the strife 
of neology and evangelical belief has had its fullest 
career. In the church of Luther we can see all the 
steps in the history of criticism which I have de- 
scribed. The neology of Germany began as a revolt 
against the dogmatic methods of the time ; it ripened 
from the day of Paulus into the rationalism which fol- 
lowed the critical system of Kant, and narrowed 
Christianity to a code of ethics, It passed again, with 
the more brilliant Pantheism of Strauss, into the philo- 
sophic theory that found in the life of Christ a beau- 
tiful myth of the past. Yet step by step there grew 
within the Church the deeper and devout criticism of 
the Scripture. It was against the facts of Christian 
history that the mythical theory was broken in pieces. 
We have to-day the successors of Strauss in the schol- 
ars of Tubingen, who claim that they have found the 
method of historic criticism. Yet it is seldom under- 
derstood by those who look with fear on their subtle 
learning, that so far from a step forward, their method 
was a confession of the failure of the mythical view. 
They have been forced to admit the historic basis of 



262 Epochs in Church History. 

Christianity. They take now the last ground of as- 
sault in an attempt, by a keen analysis of the New 
Testament books, to overturn their apostolic origin. 
We need not underrate their skill, but this we can 
justly say, that a fearless inquiry has only led to a 
sounder faith. Each step has been nearer to the end. 
It has been no fruitless struggle, but from first to last 
the gain of a Christian scholarship. All the rich con- 
tributions to biblical knowledge, all the noblest names 
on the side of German evangelical belief, all that has 
passed into the thought of our time, is the fruit of the 
long conflict. And that I may not be supposed to 
write in this my unsustained opinion, I beg to add the 
words of Dorner, which sum the whole question. Af- 
ter a full statement of the systems of Strauss and 
Baur, he concludes that " the negative criticism, be- 
ginning with the Wolfenbiittel fragments, hastens ir- 
resistibly to round its circle. The mythical hypothe- 
sis, even in its more modern form, the moment it sets 
foot on the ground of the actual history of Christ's 
words and deeds, begins to destroy its own founda- 
tions. Its latest phase must be its last." " Evangel- 
ical faith may fearlessly allow its full rights to criti- 
cism, and to an exegesis now no longer under 
tutelage."* Such is the position of this great evan- 
gelical leader. It may well assure us of the simple 

* Dorner, Gesch. d. Prot. Theol. B. 3, Th. 1. 



The Aim and Influence of Biblical Criticism. 263 

truth, which the Christian Church should have learned 
long ago, that biblical study has everything to hope 
and nothing to dread from the progress of criticism. 

With this idea of a biblical science we are now ready 
to understand its further influence in the growths of 
Christian learning in our own time. It is, first of all, 
in the sphere of theology that I wish to study it, as the 
weightiest of questions for the scholar. To know the 
whole result of modern studies we must look a mo- 
ment at the intrinsic connection of theology with the 
sources of revelation. It is the necessary work of the 
Church to set forth in the form of creeds and articles 
the truths given in the Scripture, not only because they 
are bulwarks against error, but because there is a unity 
and harmony in these truths themselves. Theology 
has thus its orderly growth from the earliest time, as 
each period has studied more deeply the sacred word, 
and has brought out in some new relation to the men- 
tal and spiritual want the central doctrines of the Gos- 
pel. There is no shallower mistake than that of the 
sceptic who looks back on the gathered systems of the 
Christian past as an empty word-battle. All the most 
earnest conflicts between the decaying pagan thought 
and the truths of God in relation to man, are embodied 
in the Nicene symbol. All the struggles of the mind 
and heart of Europe are written in the confessions of 
the Reformed churches. But while this is true, it is 
to be remembered that the great danger of theology 



264 Epochs in Church History. 

is always to mistake the empiric doctrinal system of 
one age or sect for the Catholic truth. We have seen 
already the root of this error in the historic sketch of 
biblical science ; but it may be read at large in the his- 
tory of the Church. The doctrine of the Incarnation 
became at last a metaphysical formula, and the rich 
theology of Augustine was frozen into the definitions of 
the schools. The latter dogmatism of the Reformed 
communions, when the original life of the Gospel had 
been fettered by its schoolmen, led the way to the re- 
action of neology. And hence the need of the Church 
is always to keep alive the study of the word of God, 
the divine truth that shall guard it against these idols of 
the theological cave. If our religion become for the 
body of teachers or believers a system of doctrinal prop- 
ositions, it has lost its power. Theology must be a 
healthy growth, not a fungus deposit that kills the tree. 
It is the clear recognition of this principle, which 
more especially in our time is working out the truest 
and largest results. One of its marked signs is the 
study of doctrinal history, which we may justly call the 
fruit of the last half century. Our best thinkers per- 
ceive, that we have reached the point where the sys- 
tems of the past must be studied in their historic law 
of growth, to know the real harmony. Augustine and 
Anselm, Calvin and Luther, Twesten and Rothe must 
be measured by the conditions of their Christian time. 
Yet this is only the herald of a deeper want. It is a 



The Aim and Influence of Biblical Criticism. 265 

Biblical theology in its true meaning, toward which 
both our critical and doctrinal learning aims. I do 
not mean that mechanical summary of the doctrines 
of Scripture which consists in arranging its texts under 
certain heads. I mean that study of its whole struct- 
ure, of the essential character of the Gospels, of the 
growth of Apostolic thought in its first formative time, 
which shall take us back to the unity of Christian faith 
before the aftergrowths of the Church. Such a study 
will plant us on the foundations. It will not make us 
prize the less any dogmatic formations of the past, 
but rather to the Christian scholar the history of the- 
ology will be that of a living mind, expounding the 
divine, inexhaustible mind of Christ. All the articles 
of our theology will be seen to be the manifold ex- 
pression of the one truth of Revelation, God in Christ, 
reconciling the world to himself. This Biblical science 
alone can bring unity into our discordant confessions. 
We do not want a new formula of concord, which 
seeks compromise in some more subtle definings. As 
our divines have learned to study St. Paul's view of 
justification by its own light more than through the 
spectacles of Calvin or Arminius, to measure the sys- 
tem of Augustine from the true centre of the New Tes- 
tament, not force his theory of decrees or sacramental 
regeneration on the Gospel, they have learned our 
substantial agreement. We have to-day a renewed 
discussion of the Atonement. It does not show that 



266 Epochs in Church History. 

this central truth is in danger, but we are only learn- 
ing not to define by the theology of Anselm alone 
that mystery of a divine love which speaks in the 
sacrifice of the Son of God. And as the theology of 
the past will thus find its impartial test in such a study 
of the Word, so the true aim of a Christian theology 
to-day will be clear. Critical learning will not destroy 
any true doctrinal teaching of former times. But the 
problems that now call out the deepest thought of the 
Church are of more moment than any before, because 
they come from the special relation of revealed truth 
to the whole field of science in this age. They touch 
the life of Christianity. It is for the personality of 
God, the agreement of a supernatural revelation with 
law, the need of religion as the ground of moral sanc- 
tions, the origin and destiny of the race, the hope of 
a future existence, that we are called to battle with a 
Pyrrhonism which shelters itself under the mask of 
scientific truth. We must surely know that if we are 
to meet the Agnosticism of this day, it can only be by a 
thorough mastery of the method as well as the true re- 
sults of science. It should be enough to warn us of 
our most fatal mistake, when we find Herbert Spencer 
citing Mansel as an oracle, and building his whole 
system of denial on the theological ground which that 
ingenious champion of the faith thought the strong- 
hold of revelation. If Christian theology will have 
again its mastery, as in former times, over the minds 



The A im and Influence of Biblical Criticism. 267 

of men, it will not be by claiming that the " limits of 
religious thought " forbid us to apply to Scripture even 
the moral laws, which the author of revelation has 
written on the conscience. It will not be by defend- 
ing past modes of scholastic thought with crude ex- 
egesis. But it will be by accepting all that a sound 
criticism has given us, and recognizing the fact that 
the abiding truths of Christianity have more power 
than ever, if they speak in the language that convinces 
the intelligence, the conscience, and the life. This is 
our want. If we can teach men to read in their Bibles 
no sealed deposit of our theology, but the plain fact 
of a personal Creator, a God in history, a revelation of 
divine love and duty in His. Son, we need not fear the 
atheism of to-day. And this is my earnest conviction, 
that all our noblest aims are guiding us toward this 
end. This study of the essential character of revelation 
shall give the new life to theology, and make it again, 
as it has been in the past, able to restore the age from 
doubt to belief. 

Yet it is not only in the direct sphere of theological 
learning that I recognize this influence of biblical criti- 
cism. I must pass briefly to its relations with other 
subjects, of as deep interest to the Christian thought 
of our time. The history of the Church, in its bear- 
ings on all the questions of its nature and polity, is 
one of the weightiest of these. It is, indeed, among 
the best fruits of this Christian age, hardly older than 



268 Epochs in Church History. 

the immortal work of Neander, that we have begun to 
read in the history of our religion more than the Latin 
idea of an ecclesiastical state, or the too common one 
among Protestant writers of a series of dark ages, fol- 
lowed by an anarchy of sect. We see in it now the 
historic law of a Divine order, a religion linked in every 
step of its life, through its Nicene period, its mediaeval 
feudalism, its awakening to knowledge and freedom in 
the Reformation, with all the growths of Christian civ- 
ilization. But it is only in the more critical study of 
the New Testament itself we can find the ground- 
work of Church history. Just as this study leads us 
back from the manifold partial systems of doctrine to 
the living truth of the Gospel, it leads us from the frag- 
mentary polities to the original fellowship of Christ. 
We learn from it that the Church of the New Testa- 
ment was indeed an organic body, not a mere move- 
ment of Jewish religious life ; yet, on the other hand, no 
copy of the theocracy of Ezra, with its priestly caste, 
or temple service, but a divine germ meant to grow, like 
all institutions, in the soil of the world, and take shape 
according to the conditions of all social growth. The 
critical method of our time, as I have proved, has shown 
us the gradual way in which each visible feature of 
the Apostolic body, its ministry, its creed, its worship, 
passed into fixed shape from the freer life of the first 
household. Such a study, then, corrects by the most 
impartial tests the common error of all sectarian theo- 



The Aim and Influence of Biblical Criticism. 269 

rists. Romanism is built on the a priori notion of a visi- 
ble ecclesia, and can construct the whole supremacy of 
Peter out of one misread verse in the Gospels. An- 
glicanism follows the same method. It reasons from its 
assumption of the need of a succession to the facts, 
and so can readily turn the brief letter of Paul to 
Timothy into a treatise on the divine origin and per- 
petuity of the Episcopate. But as no chain is stronger 
than its weakest link, so the weakest link in this case 
is where it should be strongest, in the degree of the 
New Testament evidence. Nor is the error less with 
the Presbyterian who will find a divine law in parity, 
the Independent who thinks the Kingdom of God a 
democracy, or the Baptist who insists on immersion, 
or adult baptism, because they were the usage of the 
infant Church. All such theories vanish before the 
criticism which teaches us to rest no system on a few 
slender hints, but to apply the laws of history. Yet 
let none be alarmed at the result, for such criticism 
gives more than it takes away. It is argument enough 
for the Episcopate, when we can trace in it the nor- 
mal growth of the early diocesan Church. It is enough 
that infant baptism was the natural form of the house- 
hold religion, whether before or after the Apostolic 
age. We can recognize the unity in essential faith 
and order of the first believers, while we know the 
plastic character of the time. Our New Testament 
study is more and more bringing us into the fellow- 



270 Epochs in Church History. 

ship of the Christian body, as we thus measure the 
real worth of primitive facts. 

And thus we may pass to the last thought, which 
encloses all in itself. The influence of such a biblical 
science will be toward the growth of that real Chris- 
tian life which is the end of all Christian knowledge. 
As our studies bring us nearer to that divine yet hu- 
man Person in whom the Gospels centre, we shall 
learn more and more that the kingdom of God is 
larger than any symbolic books or any ecclesiastical 
order, and can only be fulfilled as the life of the incar- 
nate Lord is embodied in the life of redeemed human- 
ity. Theology is queen of the sciences, but the unity 
of the spirit is the substance of the symbol. The 
Church is the school-master, but its purpose is to up- 
build the " perfect man." And this is the view of 
Christianity which shall meet the most earnest inqui- 
ries of our time. It wants this kingdom of God, which 
was meant by its Author to be the fellowship of men 
redeemed in Christ, and which alone can solve the 
present riddles, more real than all disputes of creed or 
ecclesiastical polity, the education of the social con- 
science, the unity of severed classes, the reconcilement 
of our culture with a reverent faith, the aims of peace 
and wise benevolence. If we have learned this need 
of our time, we have learned the noblest work given 
to the scholar or the Christian man. And as we study 
our subject in this light, we shall perceive it to be the 



The Aim and Influence of Biblical Criticism. 271 

deepest principle of the Gospel, that this ethical and 
living result should be the latest. It may seem at first 
a strange law, but the more we examine it, it will be 
found to have its correspondence with all history. 
Revelation has obeyed the order of intellectual and 
moral growth. It has cost the world its nineteen ages 
to ripen the germ planted by the divine sower in the 
soil. There was needed first the period of theological 
training in Greek and Latin Christianity, until it 
reached the unity of doctrine and law. There was 
needed next the critical period of a Protestant thought, 
by which it reached the utmost point of Christian 
knowledge. There is needed now the outcome from 
the strifes of system to the positive unity of truth. It 
is the life of Christ, the living application of the Gos- 
pel that He revealed, the real kingdom of a divine 
humanity, which is now to show to the world the fruit 
hidden in the seed, but asking all these processes for 
its growth. The study of the original sources of Chris- 
tianity is one of the great signs of the time that we 
are on the very threshold of this best period. 

If, then, my view of the aim and influence of our 
biblical science be true, if we can see its relations with 
the most real aims of our modern scholarship, we may 
surely accept the present state of learning, in spite of 
all its drawbacks, with faith in the result. I have not 
hidden its dangers or its defects. It would, of course, 
be useless to expect that any who look on all inquiry 



2J2 EpocJis in Church History. 

in criticism or theology as beyond the sphere of 
science, will agree with such views. But enough if I 
can aid those who, in a time of much confusion, are 
seeking the true harmony between the abiding ground 
of revelation and the changing growths of doctrinal 
interpretation. Nor can I more fitly close this essay 
than by a last citation from the scholar who has 
written so nobly the history of Protestant theology. 
" It may be said that modern theology and literature 
in this country show a riper stage of exegesis than in 
any former time. Not only have the laws of interpre- 
tation been examined and a science of hermeneutics 
formed ; not only are the auxiliary studies of criticism, 
history, geography in advance, and the text more 
clearly settled, but the exposition of the New Testa- 
ment has within these forty years had a wonderful 
progress. The masters of modern exegesis are thus 
working together toward a biblical theology, which, 
though a historical science, by no means displacing 
dogmatics or ethics, will hold up to these the real and 
in many regards more complete model, wherein they 
have their standard." It is enough for me that my 
line of argument is confirmed by so unquestioned a 
master ; and I can only hope that the growth he has 
seen in his own land may encourage all Christian 
scholars who are working for the same true end. 

And let me, then, say one last word to my younger 
brethren, about to be set apart at the close of their 



The Aim and Influence of Biblical Criticism. 273 

studies as ministers of what the greatest of Apostles 
calls the " health-giving teaching " of Christ. It is 
the holiest of tasks to which we are pledged as de- 
fenders of his Gospel ; and above all, in this day, 
when, as never before, it is to battle with the boldest 
unbelief as well as the boldest superstition. Let me 
beg you to remember that our victory depends, be- 
yond all else, on our faith in the divine power of reve- 
lation itself. It is not distrust of science, nor blind 
adherence to traditional methods, but the honest, 
pure, steadfast love of the truth, that shall make us 
such scholars, such teachers, such apostles as the 
Church needs. If you will be true to that principle 
of Evangelical faith which has been the life of this 
venerable school, you will leave to the Romanist, or 
the ecclesiastic of like type, their crumbling earth- 
works, and ask no other strength than His who is the 
living Word of God. I invoke on your minds and 
hearts that Spirit which guides into all truth. I ask 
for you and for us in fuller measure this knowledge, 
which, as it begins with the revelation of the Father 
in His Son, shall end in what passeth knowledge, our 
union with Him whom to know is eternal life. 



12" 



THE 
CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE 

AND THE 

STUDY OF THE SCRIPTURES. 



It is an old question I bring before you, as old as the 
first day of the Reformation, when the translation of 
the Bible was the leader of intellectual as well as re- 
ligious freedom ; yet as new, and perhaps more weighty, 
in its connections with modern thought. What is the 
right, and what the law of the Christian conscience in 
the study of the Scriptures ? The subject meets us in 
many relations, which demand our earnest inquiry. 
It forces itself on the friends of public education, who 
must inquire to-day whether the Bible shall be ex- 
cluded from the school. It meets the thoughtful be- 
liever in the grave riddles opened by the growth of 
Biblical criticism and the fresh researches of science. 
We hear on one side the denier of any divine revela- 
tion, who claims that he is the only true champion of 
Protestant principle. Nor can we doubt, on the other, 
that the secret of most of the perversions to the Church 
274 



The Study of the Scriptures. 275 

of Rome lies, as one of its best apologists holds, in the 
uneasy fear which finds its refuge in the name of in- 
fallibility. Where do we stand ? Is there any agree- 
ment between Protestant freedom and unity in Chris- 
tian truth ? What is the Protestant principle ? 

I wish to answer this question with an honest clear- 
ness. I believe with the fullest conviction that the 
ground of the Reformation is the true and the only 
true one on which we can rest. Yet it is not so easy 
as some think to be stated ; and it involves some 
points in which I shall doubtless differ from the popu- 
lar view. But if I can so meet them as to convince 
you that our growth in Christian knowledge is one 
with an unshaken faith I shall fulfil my purpose. Nor 
do I speak only or chiefly to scholars ; for although I 
shall touch on lines of thought which any students in 
theology who hear me may follow into deep waters, 
my earnest wish is to meet the wants of all thoughtful 
Christian men, to give them in a day of chaotic opin- 
ions that abiding truth which to know is eternal life. 

We must begin our inquiry with a clear statement 
of our Protestant position, and the argument urged 
against it by the ablest opponents. The doctrines of 
a justifying faith in Christ, and of the supremacy of 
Holy Scripture as containing all necessary truth, are 
the ground of the Reformation. Both are sides of one 
principle. It is the claim of the Protestant that no 
traditions of men and no outward sacramental systems 



276 Epochs in Cliurch History. 

can come between the personal conscience and God ; 
and therefore the word of God alone can be the rule 
of faith. But it is the position of the Roman Church 
that such a principle is the claim only of the most law- 
less freedom. Although all may profess to hold one 
Bible, yet as the right to examine and settle its truth 
belongs to every conscience ; as many questions of 
doctrine as well as order are involved in such study ~ 
which need Christian learning, and as few have either 
the intellect or training for this, the Protestant claim 
is the source of unbelief or fanaticism. To talk of 
the inspiration of such a Book is a misnomer. If it 
can be interpreted by any sect or any man, it is no 
longer the word of God. None can state the reason- 
ing better than a stern Protestant satirist of former 
days. 

" What is the Bible ? The book where each man seeks his own dog- 
mas ; 
Yes, and the book where each man certainly finds what he seeks." 

If there be a unity of faith, then, it can only be pos- 
sible when we admit the supreme authority of the 
Church as the interpreter ; and tradition, so far from 
being contrary to Scripture, is thus necessary to it. 
Protestantism has been, says the Romanist, its own 
fearful commentary on this fact ; for since the day of 
Luther it has overturned not merely the system of the 
Church, but the Scriptures whose authority it boasts ; 
and to-day its Bible means anything from Strauss to 



The Study of the Scriptures. 277 

the latest unbelief. Nor is it only or chiefly as the 
destroyer of a sound learning that it is to be feared ; 
it is the destroyer of the simple religion of the peo- 
ple, the parent of all doubt and all impiety. Such 
has been the argument, from the Variations of Bos- 
suet to the latest of these divines. I cannot give it in 
more eloquent strength than in the discourse of the 
greatest of modern French preachers, Lacordaire, and 
I am anxious to do full justice to his reasoning : 
" Take from the heavenly order the force Newton has 
consecrated under the name of attraction, and at once 
the globes peopling the ether would fly in contrary 
paths, precipitated by that other force which is the 
schismatic power of nature. There must be a princi- 
ple of unity superior to the elements of discord which 
it nurses in its bosom, and this principle, it has a 
name : it is sovereignty. And as there is no civil so- 
ciety without sovereignty, there is no society of minds 
without an intellectual sovereignty. Should Protes- 
tants carry their doctrine over the world, what then ? 
They would have sown the Bible, and with it some 
ideas it contains ; but they would not have established 
a divine order, for they have none." This is the logic 
of the Roman Catholic system in a word. Unity of 
faith is impossible with Protestant freedom in the 
study of the Scriptures. 

We are, then, fairly to test this question. If my 
purpose were merely to answer the Romish doctrine, it 



278 Epochs in CJiurch History. 

would be enough to say that its objection comes from 
an utter misstatement of the Protestant principle. 
The aim of the Reformers, in claiming the supremacy 
of Scripture, was not at all to deny a due authority 
in the Christian Church to interpret the Scripture, but 
to deny any authority to impose as of faith any dog- 
mas " not proven by warranty of Scripture." Nor is 
the abuse of freedom in its interpretation any argu- 
ment against its right use. We hear quoted, often 
with a sneer, the old watchword, " The Bible is the 
religion of Protestants;" but the sense in which that 
phrase was first uttered by Chillingworth, the most 
clear-headed of thinkers, was not that the Protestant 
faith meant whatever any self-willed theorist or igno- 
rant enthusiast might force on the Bible, but simply 
that it contained all necessary truth. But I do not 
wish merely to answer blow by blow. I wish fairly to 
meet all the difficulties of the case as they are felt by 
every thinking mind among Protestants themselves. 
Let us hear them honestly. Are there not, it is asked, 
many questions of science and criticism utterly be- 
yond the range of any save learned men, which are 
yet claimed as necessary to the faith in revelation ? 
Is there any real difference between a Protestant con- 
fession, which demands this, and a Romish infalli- 
bility? Is not the notion of free inquiry in such a 
case a mockery ? I cannot doubt that such questions 
are hard to reconcile with some of our prevailing 



The Study of the Scriptures. 279 

ideas of Scripture, and the systems of doctrine iden- 
tified with it. I cannot doubt that the dilemma has 
led many to the denial of all positive belief, and 
driven others into a Church which rids them of a 
painful responsibility. And, therefore, I wish to con- 
sider this whole subject of the right of the conscience 
and the true authority it recognizes. It will lead us 
to that view of Scripture which makes it in the no- 
blest sense a sure word of truth, and that view of the 
Church which makes it a living fellowship. 

Let us, then, study the principle which was the 
starting point of Protestant thought. I have said 
that the doctrines of a justifying faith in Christ and 
the supremacy of the Holy Scripture are parts of one 
truth. What was this idea of justifying faith, which 
created a new life not only in theology, but in all 
thinking minds from a Luther to the plain Christian 
man ? Was it another scholastic proposition to take 
the place of the reigning system ? Surely no. It was 
the very contrary. It was the good tidings that Chris- 
tianity was no system of scholastic notions to be re- 
ceived by a blind assent, but the Gospel which could 
only be known by the living knowledge of Christ. 
Such a principle uprooted at once the theory on 
which was built the Sacramental fabric of Rome. It 
opened that ethical and spiritual path which has dis- 
tinguished Protestant thought ever since from the 
traditionary religion of the past. And if the doctrine 



280 Epochs in Church History. 

of justification has sometimes since been changed into 
a metaphysical notion as hard as those of the schools, 
it was in its original idea this restoration of a living, 
simple Christianity. The Gospel of Christ is given 
for one only purpose — to reveal redemption from sin, 
our sonship with the Father, and a life of real holi- 
ness, as the way of the life eternal. This is its sub- 
stance. It is clear, therefore, that such a revelation 
must come to every man as a personal being endowed 
with thought and conscience, and must demand the 
personal exercise of those powers to receive its truth. 
Jesus Christ, the giver of pardon, grace, life, the per- 
sonal revealer of the Father, is the object of knowl- 
edge. Such a knowledge, then, must be in its essen- 
tial character different to any such assent as we give 
to mere authority in question^ of science or history. 
It begins with the recognition of our moral relation 
to God as His children, of His law of holiness and 
our sin, of the love of God as it meets this want in 
the incarnate grace of His Son. It is a knowledge, 
therefore, not only intellectual, but knit with the re- 
newed affections, and through it we receive the truth 
of Christ as we are made one with His own spirit of 
holiness. His revelation becomes to us not only a 
doctrine, but a life of real growth in His fellowship, 
of daily duty to God and men. But if this be indeed 
our conception of Christianity as a personal faith, it 
is clear, again, that it is no individual opinion, no 



The Study of the Scriptures. 281 

subjective religion. It rests on the one common 
truth of the incarnate Son of God,, whose revelation 
is the same for all men, because all have in their con- 
sciences the same fact of their relation to God, the 
same sense of sin, the same need of redemption. This 
was the Protestant principle ; and it is plain in this 
view that it was and was meant to be, not a new 
Christianity, but the old, positive, historic faith, as it 
was embodied in the Apostles' Creed, which Luther 
and all the Reformers held ; that faith, not in later 
dogmatic systems, but in the Gospel of the New Tes- 
tament, which spoke at once to the mind of each per- 
sonal believer, yet is the ground of fellowship for all 
who are members of the great household of God, 

We have here, then, the just and the only just view 
of this principle, as it bears on the doctrine of the su- 
premacy and sufficiency of the Scriptures. The in- 
carnate Christ is the object of our faith. It is in this 
volume alone we have the original, pure record of the 
truth and grace He has bestowed ; and all the systems 
of men can add nothing to it. We are, then, to inter- 
pret it in accordance with the law of its divine unity. 
It is given in the form of history ; a history which 
teaches us the educatio-n of the world through its 
growing childhood to the birth of Him who was the 
fulness of times. That history, in its very structure, 
is mingled with many critical questions as to the cre- 
ation, the annals of the early race, the development 



282 Epochs in Church History. 

of Hebrew life, and the formation of the new Chris- 
tian society. But its one essential purpose, so far as 
it concerns our belief as followers of Christ, is the 
knowledge of our redemption. Christ is the key of 
the Scriptures. It is "through the faith that is in 
Christ Jesus," the Apostle says, in that much-miscon- 
ceived verse of his Epistle, we learn that " all Scriptures 
are given by divine inspiration." The spirit of His 
Gospel alone opens them. It gives us the knowledge 
that is not a scientific guess-work, " but both profitable 
for teaching, for instruction in righteousness." If we 
have learned His truth, these pages from beginning to 
end have a living unity. The Old Testament reveals the 
one personal God, the creator of the world ; the origin 
of man as a son in His moral likeness ; the entrance 
of sin by the free act of transgression ; the contin- 
uance of a divine grace in the long preparatory train- 
ing of the Hebrew past ; the holy law, which stands 
alone, like Sinai, in the moral desert of history. The 
New Testament reveals the perfect truth and grace 
of God in the person, the life, the sacrifice of Jesus 
Christ. All these parts of the sacred volume have 
thus their mutual connections, and all must be inter- 
preted by their one divine purpose. 

Such, then, must be the clear principle which guides 
us in our study. Whatever belongs to these founda- 
tion truths is the divine, infallible faith of Christian 
men. Whatever does not touch these lies within the 



The Study of the Scriptures. 283 

outer circle of scientific inquiry. I do not here dwell 
on the theory of verbal or plenary inspiration. If the 
view I have given you be clear, it will be seen that 
such a theory, whatever the reverence of Scripture 
that prompts it, leaves the deepest difficulties of the 
subject unanswered. For if the Bible be indeed a 
book which only presents to us a vast number of crit- 
ical riddles, to be received as part of essential revela- 
tion, yet in their very nature beyond the decision of 
any save the most critical scholar, and always open to 
fresh controversy, then it must demand, as the Ro- 
manist asks, an infallible interpreter. Our faith, then, 
needs a surer ground. It rests on the knowledge of 
Him who is the life of the written Word. It is our 
deeper reverence for its inspired truth, our faith in its 
real unity, which point us to the principle I have laid 
down. Such a knowledge will teach us the right 
point of view, from which we shall learn the worth of 
the Hebrew history, its worship, its social polity, its 
heroes and its saints, yet understand the far higher 
character of the Christian Gospel and the Christian 
holiness. It will show us the due relation of all its 
parts, chronicle or psalm or prophecy, to the central 
design. It will show us the natural variety in the 
style of the writers, the tone of their thought, yet 
their true harmony. There will be no self-willed rea- 
son in this study, for it is to follow the reason of the 
Word itself. There will be no vague opinion, for we 



284 EpocJis in Church History. 

" hold the head, even Christ." We shall not fear the 
assaults of a false neology, because we shall be assured 
that all the results of earlier or later criticisms can no 
more shake the foundations than the removing of a 
few loose stones can shake the walls of the cathedral. 
Much will interest us as Christian scholars which will 
not touch our Christian faith. Science will decide at 
last, as it did with the heresy of Copernicus, the ques- 
tions of our time as to the Mosaic cosmogony, or the age 
of the world ; yet its verdict will not disturb us, if the 
design of revelation be, not to teach geology or astron- 
omy, or the details of secular history, but to give us 
the knowledge of redemption. And as this is the plain 
rule for the scholar, so the simple believer will read 
this word without needless questions concerning that 
which has no bearing whatever on his faith or holiness. 
If we have not this knowledge of Christ's Gospel, al- 
though we have sounded all the depths and shoals of 
criticism, we have not the alphabet of the truth; if we 
have this, the sacred volume is one — one in its historic 
and its spiritual meaning, one for the wise and the 
unlettered, one for the intellect, the heart, and the 
life. 

In such a light we pass clearly to the next weighty 
side of our subject, the authority of the Church as the 
interpreter of the Scriptures. It is the claim of the 
Romanist, and of others who deny the Protestant prin- 
ciple, that there must be unity of faith in regard to 



The Study of the Scriptures. 285 

the truths of revelation. We grant this, nay, we affirm 
this unity as the very bond of fellowship. To deny it 
would be to make revelation a mockery. A religion 
or a Church which came out of no positive truth 
whatever, would be as like that of the New Testa- 
ment as the universe of Prof. Haeckel out of a lifeless 
cell is like that of the Divine Maker. But the ques- 
tion on which hinges the real difference is as to the 
nature of this unity. What is it? We may have 
already given the answer in the conclusion we reached 
as to the character of the Scripture itself. The truth 
of the Word of God has in itself, as we sought to 
show, an intrinsic unity ; it is the one revelation of 
Jesus Christ, of the sonship and fellowship of be- 
lievers in him. There need be, then, no contradiction 
whatever, and no perplexity as to the superior claim 
of Bible or of Church. It is said that the Church ex- 
isted before the Scripture, and that the canon itself 
rests on its authority. Undoubtedly. It is said that 
the Scripture is above the Church. Undoubtedly. But 
the view which we have given reconciles them. Jesus 
Christ, the living Word, is before and above both. 
The Incarnation is the key of the Bible ; without it, 
there remains a dead letter. The Incarnation is the 
basis of our organic fellowship ; without it, creed and 
sacrament are dead. Scripture and the Church, then, 
bear witness to one and the selfsame essential truth. 
The written word remains always the original, supreme 



286 Epochs in Church History. 

and sufficing record of Him, nor can any authority of 
human councils add anything as of necessary belief to 
what He has given. It is the function of the Church 
to keep this truth in its simplicity, to embody in its 
creed the clear meaning of revelation, to expound it 
through its authorized teachers, its devout worship, 
and its methods of practical education. 

A Christian creed is thus the growth of Christian 
thought. It was necessary that the truth of the Incar- 
nate Christ should be defined in its more doctrinal 
form when our religion had passed beyond the plain 
belief of Apostolic days, and many speculative theories 
had beclouded its simplicity. The great doctrines of 
sin, atonement, grace, have been the successive ex- 
positions of the one revealed fact of God in Christ, as 
age after age they have employed the mind of the 
Church. But while this is true, the unity of the faith 
is not the unity of a theological system. Creeds and 
confessions have their needful use as a bulwark 
against speculative errors, but they are not the living 
truth itself. We have in the science of astronomy the 
noblest work of the human mind in reckoning the 
orbit of the sun and the varied motion of the planets ; 
yet the sun, not the treatise of astronomy, gives light 
and heat. And even so it is the personal power of 
Christ's truth which gives life. The belief in His Incar- 
nation did not rest on the vote of an assembly of 
bishops in the Nicene age ; the common faith of 



The Study of the Scriptures. 287 

believers uttered itself in the creed, and this is the 
truth speaking in the New Testament now and always 
in the divine sinless grace of His person, of which the 
symbol is only the scientific expression. Thus it is 
with each doctrine. Augustin may expound the 
meaning of sin, Anselm may give us a theory of the 
atonement, Calvin may reason of the riddle of grace 
and will ; but it is the fact of sin in the conscience of 
each, the truth of redemption as it speaks in the 
heartfelt revelation of the Saviour, which makes be- 
lievers one. And hence the chief duty of the Church is, 
while it guards against ignorant interpretation, to keep 
"the healthy teaching" which St. Paul so often urges, 
by an appeal to the open word of Scripture. Here alone 
in the primitive, fresh Gospel we have the touchstone 
by which to try the dross of all traditions ; here we all, 
scholars or simple, have one common birthright. 

Now this clear principle we are to distinguish from 
the false view of the Church as the interpreter of the 
word. It is the claim of the Romanist that Scripture 
is the record of divine truth ; but its interpretation is 
given to one class of teachers alone, and a Christian 
faith is an unquestioning assent to its decrees. Let 
us not mistake the difference. This claim is not only 
to the authority of a wise teaching, consistent with 
the open knowledge of the word of God, but to infal- 
libility. And I beg you again to observe the ground 
of the claim. It is that false conception of the Script- 



288 Epochs in Church History. 

ures which I have endeavored to expose. It is the 
assumption of the Romanist that the Christian reve- 
lation is a system of abstract dogmas, of scientific 
riddles, which must therefore be a sealed book to all 
save a few authorized expounders. I turn to one of 
the most subtle of modern defences, the Grammar of 
Assent, by Mr. Newman, for the clear statement of 
the doctrine. "It stands to reason that all, learned 
and unlearned, are bound to believe the whole re- 
vealed doctrine in all its parts and all it implies ; it 
stands also to reason that a doctrine so deep and 
various as the revealed deposit um of faith cannot be 
brought home to us and made our own all at once." 
" The difficulty is removed by the dogma of the 
Church's infallibility and of the consequent duty of 
implicit faith in her word. It stands in the place of 
all abstruse propositions in a Catholic mind, for to 
believe in her word is to virtually believe in them all. 
Even what he cannot understand he can believe to 
be true, and he believes it to be true because he be- 
lieves in the Church." Examine now the logic. If 
the word of God be such a riddle, " deep and various," 
and if essential faith be in this riddle, then in very 
deed many Protestant minds would cry, " Let us give 
up our torturing responsibility, and rest in the Nir- 
vana of the infallible Church. But if it be not this— if 
it be a revelation indeed for the mind and heart — such 
a claim is the most astounding of absurdities. We 



The Study of the Scriptures. 289 

lay bare here the root of this sophistry. Such a faith 
is not the acceptance of the truth of Christ, as it meets 
our personal thought or affection ; it is the assent of 
the blind mind to a sum of abstruse propositions 
which we cannot know at all, but believe because we 
are told to believe them. If this be Christianity, then 
it is no revelation. The word of God is a mockery, 
for it can convey no light, even through the glasses of 
its pretended interpreters. This mental assent is such 
as the man of science would demand should he say, 
''You cannot see the stars with the naked eye; put 
out your eyes and then look through my telescope." 
If this again be Catholic unity, then the truths of our 
salvation are a deposit of esoteric dogma in the hands 
of an irresponsible priesthood. If this be Catholic 
certainty, then the meaning of the Scripture is not 
surer than when left at the mercy of a hundred sects, 
for we have absolutely no test left to judge between its 
truth and every tradition. Who does not see that out 
of this root has sprung the harvest of falsehoods ? The 
Church declares as Christ's word, " This is my body ; " 
and, therefore, a bit of bread is Christ, although sense, 
reason, and Scripture, deny it ; and for the commun- 
ion that asks your intelligent faith, you must hold a 
senseless and soulless marvel on peril of salvation. 
Yet we have devout men to-day who, for fear of un- 
belief, will choose this theory and call it the unity of 
faith. Strange insanity ! It will make a hundred- 
13 



290 Epochs in Church History. 

fold more unbelievers than the most destructive criti- 
cism. But let us not merely recognize here the error 
of a Roman Catholic system. It may lurk and does 
too often lurk in Protestant disguise. If, instead of 
the simple truth of the Gospel of Christ, we make it 
an abstruse theology or a volume of scientific riddles, 
we shall reach a like conclusion. Whether it be 
Trent, or Dort, or Westminster, whether Anglo-Cath- 
olic or any other, to mistake the authority of theolog- 
ical confessions for the unity of the faith is the prin- 
ciple of infallibility. Our Christianity becomes a gos- 
pel of notions, not a living word. 

And if, then, we so understand the rightful relation 
of Scripture to the Church, we can at once apply our 
reasoning to the conclusion before us — our right and 
our responsibility in this study. The law which binds 
our conscience, and the freedom we must maintain in 
the pursuit of the truth, are not contrary to each other, 
but one. I shall take up each of these points in its 
order. We have the true idea of law : not the sur- 
render of our Christian right to any arbitrary power, 
but our intelligent, willing unity in the body of Christ, 
We recognize in our relation to the Church the same 
organic fact we accept in all our growth. Each of us 
has his education from youth to manhood in this social 
atmosphere ; and each must find this training in science 
or letters, under the care of the best teachers, in the 
studies suited to his powers, that he may gain the self- 



TJie Study of the Scriptures. 291 

discipline for his calling. Nor is it less so with our 
Christian nurture. There are few, unless they have 
been bred in the thin air of free religion, who sit down 
in youth to construct a belief; and if, like Mr. Mill, 
any has been guarded from all religious bias, he will 
only accept Atheism by faith in his father's infallibil- 
ity. None ever reads the Bible " without note or 
comment." We receive the current ideas of doctrine 
from home-teaching, book, Sunday-school, pulpit ; we 
catch many opinions, to be corrected by riper thought. 
But such authority is not arbitrary ; it is the same 
deference to superior learning we pay in questions of 
law or natural science. I have indeed no faith in the 
cloistered training which keeps the young mind in 
ignorance of all criticism, or in the mechanical study 
of the Bible, for such a mistake too often whets a 
doubt ; but I have as little in the slipshod religion 
that forgets the need of mental and moral discipline. 
We can only gain in the instruction of the Christian 
household the reverent reason which can enable us to 
pass beyond the school. If we have learned the sim- 
ple truths of a Father, a Redeemer, a Sanctifier, the 
law of a pure conscience, the affections that bind us 
with Christ and men, the habits of a growing holiness, 
the modesty of true knowledge, we have the heart of 
wisdom ; and whatever the mental struggles or even 
the doubt of after years, we shall seldom fall into a 
shallow or mocking unbelief. 



292 Epochs in Church History. 

Such is the authority we recognize as that which 
binds us in the communion of Christ. It is the au- 
thority of learning. It is the authority of holiness. 
It is the authority of a common faith. We do not, 
because we hold the Protestant faith and accept the 
Bible as the oracle of truth, therefore make a new 
Christianity ; but rather, we claim our share in all the 
wisdom that has studied its divine pages. The his- 
tory of the Church is not a mere wrangle of theological 
opinions. The essential truths of Christ, his doctrine 
and sacraments, are unchanged in their real influence ; 
nor do we confound with any systems of any teachers 
the faith that abides always, everywhere, and for all. 
It is a far truer view of Catholicity which our Protestant 
belief gives us than that which I have cited from La- 
cordaire. The unity of the Church, in his idea, is like 
the power of the sun, which masters the " schismatic 
force*' that tends to draw the planets from the centre. 
But let us study this magnificent figure. If there were 
no centrifugal power to balance the attraction, the 
planets would be drawn into the scorching bosom of 
the sun. That is the unity of Rome. It is not there 
we find the attractive power that keeps the life of 
Christianity. Unity in the Church, as in nature, com- 
bines authority and moral freedom. Where is this 
abiding religion? It is just where it was in the Apos- 
tolic or Nicene age. It lives in the Word of God and 
in the fellowship of Christian men. All the controver- 



The Study of the Scriptures. 293 

sies of the schools, all the questions that concern the 
critic., do not materially affect it. It is not probable 
that the habit of Christian prayer will die out because 
Mr. Tyndall has proposed his prayer gauge, or that a 
thousand theories will disturb the life of religion. The 
purpose of the Gospel of Christ is for guidance in the 
way of daily duty, and therefore it can never lose its 
power. It teaches the same Father, Redeemer, and 
Sanctifier; it heals the conscience in its struggles 
with sin, ministers to rich or poor, lettered or simple, 
one law of social duty, one comfort in trial, holds up 
the cross of Christ, and opens the gates of life eternal. 
And it is the truest mark of the divinity of our relig- 
ion, that it has this adaptation to the mind and heart 
of all men. There is a science for the scholar, and a 
sufficing wisdom for the less gifted believer. Few can 
master the Hebrew or Greek Scriptures ; few can de- 
cide the nice questions of Christian evidence ; but he 
that hath the Son of God hath the witness in himself. 
A Laplace can map the heavens by his Mecanique 
Celeste ; but the seaman, with a simpler knowledge, 
shall guide his vessel by the same stars through the 
dangers of the ocean ; and even so a Christian man, 
if he be not able to meet all the speculative riddles of 
the time, to settle the facts of geology or the law of 
evolution, may walk in the light of a positive truth 
with a faith as reasonable as it is heartfelt. Is it a 
blind assent to the voice of an infallible Church which 



294 EpocJis in Church History. 

gives this unity? No. It is that the foundation 
truths of the Christian revelation are one for the con- 
science and the life. When I turn to Augustine, as he 
reasons of the loftiest problems of the providence of 
God and the nature of the soul, I hear him say at last, 
" In Cicero and Plato I meet with many things acutely 
spoken, but in them all I find not this ; ' Come unto 
me, ye weary and heavy laden, and I will give you 
rest ';" and if I go to the humblest disciple, who has 
learned this faith in the Son of God amid the trials of 
daily life, I have the centre and sum of a Christian 
theology. 

We may thus pass to the point which completes 
our view — the freedom of inquiry in the study of the 
Scriptures. If the truth of revelation, as I have 
shown, is one and unchanging, because it lives in its 
original record and in the fellowship of all believers, 
yet the exposition of the book is human, and there- 
fore capable of clearer and clearer knowledge. There 
must be always in the Church of Christ a spirit of 
healthful growth. We are never to confound with the 
abiding faith the methods of Biblical intepretation. 
The criticism of the Word of God must, in its very 
nature, change with our closer study of language, the 
light thrown on Hebrew or Christian history from all 
sources of later learning, and the correction of past 
errors. It is impossible to find in any science, in the 
advance of astronomy from the rude chart of the 



The Study of the Scriptures. 295 

heavens to the laws of Newton, or of anatomy from 
Galen to our times, a riper growth than from the alle- 
gorical methods of the early fathers to the historic 
criticism of our day. We love the spiritual insight of 
Augustin, but his fanciful intepretation of the days of 
creation would be thought to-day strange absurdity. 
This mystical exposition has been consecrated in the 
Latin Church. But Protestantism, while it has from 
the first been truer to the Scripture, has only by de- 
grees freed itself from the same methods. It has too 
often interpreted the Scripture by its theological sys- 
tems, instead of its systems by Scripture. The Old 
Testament has been turned into a riddle, and the 
epistles of St. Paul read through our controversial 
glasses. We have too many to-day who follow the 
canon of Cocceius, that the Bible should have all the 
occult meanings they find in it. Yet each step has 
brought us nearer and nearer to the true method. And 
it is the glory of our Protestant faith that, as it claims 
above all to find truth in the Word of God, it has, in 
spite of its partial systems, encouraged that free, yet 
reverent study which is sure at last to correct its own 
errors, and lead to a living knowledge. The only con- 
dition of a healthy life, intellectual or spiritual, is in 
this ceaseless growth. Let there be an authority that 
frowns on all culture, stereotypes all belief by its 
theological confessions, and calls all reasonable thought 
rationalism, and it will end in stagnation; nay, it will 



296 Epochs in Church History, 

always create rationalism in its own bosom. It is 
passing strange that readers of history, Protestant as 
well as Romish, so often mistake this principle. The 
dogmatism of one generation reacts in the heresy of 
the next. The pent-up reason finds its only freedom 
in a wild explosion. What can give us so sure a 
lesson as the Church which boasts infallibility! No 
communion has held within its bosom more warring 
elements: Jansenist and Jesuit ; rationalists, like Abe- 
lard, who tore up school theology by the roots ; Pan- 
theists, who grafted Averroes on the stock of Catholic 
faith ; materialists, in the age before the Reformation, 
who denied soul and immortality — yet all its efforts to 
burn out thought by the fagot, or its modern anathe- 
mas against science, have ended in an unbelief among 
educated minds far deadlier than any of Protestant 
growth. Yet we have too often forgotten the lesson. 
It cannot be doubted, as Dorner has clearly shown in 
his history of the reformed doctrine, that the earlier 
neology of Germany was the natural child of the 
formal theology. Where, then, is the security of the 
faith against false science? It lies in the growth of 
true science. The Church must keep its simple creed, 
its reverent training; but it must have such trust in 
the divine power of truth that it can encourage a wise 
freedom. When I hear some of our modern dog- 
matists say that the Protestant principle leads to 
rationalism, I smile as I should at one who forbade 



The Study of the Scriptures. 297 

pure water because it holds an inflammable gas. That 
spirit is at bottom indifference to truth. The real 
secret of the power which an infallible Church has 
over many minds, is that it satisfies their sloth and 
rids them of the responsibility of thought. It was 
well said by John Locke, that if infallibility had been 
best, it had been better that God should make each 
man infallible, since mistake would then be impossi- 
ble ; yet he has not done so. Christian truth is given 
to the Church for its growth. It must keep the open 
Word of God ; it must win its victories over error by a 
sounder learning. 

But perhaps I cannot better close this argument 
than by taking, as my example, the lesson which the 
history of Biblical criticism furnishes at this day. I 
have no space for more than a sketch; but enough, if 
it teach us what I have striven to enforce, that our 
best Christian learning is the fruit of our struggles. 
We look with natural alarm at the unbelief which 
seeks to undermine the very ground of a divine revela- 
tion ; yet if we will study its steps, we shall have no 
unwise fears of the result. I have said already that 
the neology which had its birth in the Church of 
Luther, came from the decay of theology itself, which 
had hid the living truth of Scripture under its formal 
system. There was no true study of its historic 
structure or its unity of design. It was an easy work 

for the critic to sweep away the rubbish of former 
13* 



2gS Epochs in Church History. 

interpreters, to explain the miracles by ingenious 
natural theory ; and for a time it seemed that every 
part of the Old and New Testaments would be 
destroyed by this piecemeal process. But it was 
another task when the old earthworks were de- 
molished, and the rationalist came face to face with 
the central truths of revelation. A new generation of 
thinkers like Strauss followed the negative critics. 
This was the positive question they had to meet, 
what should explain that greatest of all miracles, the 
person of Christ, the central fact of both revelation 
and human history? And here, then, the Word 
of God called out the new learning of its defenders. 
It awoke a deeper study of the Scriptures. It has 
ended to-day in the noblest results. Undoubtedly our 
older methods of interpretation have been changed in 
many points ; but we have gained a larger and surer 
ground. The Old Testament has been studied in the 
light of history ; and the divine features, in which it 
stands above all records, its truths of one God, its 
stately law, its unity of design, its work in the educa- 
tion of the race, remain its unshaken evidence. But 
the result of this study is nobler yet in the New Tes- 
tament. Neology has centred its strength in the 
effort to explain away the historic miracle of Christ. 
It has sought to make Him a myth ; it has sought 
again to give a later origin to the Gospels; but each 
attempt has ended in clearer evidence of fact. The 



The Study of the Scriptures. 299 

contest is not over. It may even seem to many in 
this day of a gross atheism to be fiercer than be- 
fore. But it is precisely here we find the best promise 
of the end. For it is no longer a pretended Chris- 
tianity with which we have to strive ; it is an unbelief 
which confesses that there is no standing ground 
between an unknowable God and the revelation of 
Jesus Christ. And more than this, it is clear that the 
long struggle has ended in the sounder learning, the 
more living faith, of the Christian Church. We have 
gained not only a truer knowledge of the Scriptures, 
but through this of the character of revelation itself. 
It is the aim of our best thought to turn away from 
the unreal strifes of our theological schools, and to 
come back to the sources ; to measure systems of 
doctrine and Church parties by the one simple truth 
of Christ, not Christ by them ; and this will bring at 
last the only unity. A theology of the New Testa- 
ment, a Church of the New Testament, is what we need. 
This is the result, this is the noble witness of a Chris- 
tian learning. We may mourn over the strifes of error, 
but we are false to the cause of Christ, false to the 
whole history of the past, false to all the labors of the 
wise, false to the best hopes of the future, if we have 
not this unshaken faith in the victory of truth. 

And thus, my friends, I may gather these thoughts 
into their plain conclusion. I have shown you the re- 
lation of the Christian conscience to the Gospel of 



300 Epochs in Church History, 

Christ. I have shown you the unity of the truth given 
in the written word, and the method of its study ; its 
right harmony with the doctrinal authority of the 
Church, the abiding character of Christian belief, yet 
its growth in true knowledge. If my reasoning be 
clear, I need but a few words to enforce it on all who 
have an interest in the inquiries that busy thought- 
ful men of our own time. I hope that my view, how- 
ever imperfect, will give you such guiding principles 
as may keep you, in a day of many teachers and 
many creeds, true to the one divine Master. It is 
not an easy task to keep this harmony of a free con- 
science with authority. It is a path between the rock 
of tradition and the quicksand of unbelief. But if 
you have learned aright the living character of that 
truth, revealed in the New Testament, it will direct 
you in its study. You will not mistake for a sound 
reason the mind which examines it without any knowl- 
edge of its spiritual purpose, or with a merely critical 
keenness to dissect the letter. Such study will end 
only in a shallow misinterpretation. It is the book 
which teaches the history of God's dealing with men, 
the life of the Redeemer, and the law of duty; and 
if that be its design, it must demand of us that we ap- 
proach it with a reverent heart. Such a spirit will 
not check the love of honest inquiry : it will inspire 
it. We shall, if we be scholars, whose work it is to 
explore this mine, carry with us the safety lamp of a 



The Study of the Scriptures. 301 

devout wisdom. We shall be able to distinguish be- 
tween the essential truth it reveals, and the questions 
that are open to a scientific criticism ; we shall wel- 
come every true result of learning, without being car- 
ried away by the brilliant, but unproved theories of 
our time. We shall hold fast the truth we know, and 
keep a calm trust in it amidst the changes of opinion. 
This is the reasonable freedom of a Christian mind. It 
has no kindred with the free religion which thinks it 
possesses truth because it has renounced all positive 
creed. There is no Christian freedom save in the 
truth. And it is as far on the other side from the 
spirit which accepts the traditions of men instead of 
an intelligent and honest knowledge. Let us never 
be of those whom Hooker describes as minds that 
" use reason only to disgrace reason." There may be 
a rationalism, which weaves its theories and calls 
them revelation — a "rationalism as fatal to the sim- 
plicity of Christ as unbelief. Whatever its name, 
whether of infallible Pontiff or Protestant system, it 
must never usurp the authority we can only give to 
our Divine Master. Let us gladly promote all sound 
knowledge. Let us hail without fear that noblest 
work of our time, which will give the Church a faith- 
ful revision of the Scriptures, assured that it will 
reveal more truly the mind of its Author. Let us 
defend the faith always with the weapons of fair 
argument, of manly learning ; for we know that 



3<D2 Epochs in Church History. 

" we can do nothing against the truth, but for the 
truth." 

This is our right and responsibility in the study of 
the Holy Scripture. It is the gift of God. The Word 
is not bound; it is free as the mind of Christ: it 
fears no criticism; it asks no earthworks of false de- 
fence; it is strong enough to conquer the traditions 
and the unbelief of men ; it lay buried for centuries, 
alive in its charmed sleep, within the sarcophagus of 
a Latin superstition, and it came forth, like its Lord, 
to the better resurrection ; it has led the march of all 
knowledge, all civilization, and opens to-day in fuller 
light the mind of Him in whom are hid all treasures 
of wisdom. But it is a gift which links our freedom 
with our obedience ; and as we use or abuse it, we 
shall answer to its Giver. If we obscure, if we dis- 
tort, if we despise or neglect it, we can make the light 
darkness ; if we read, know, follow it, in His spirit 
who inspired its truth, we shall gain the knowledge 
which is eternal life. 



CHRISTIAN FAITH AND THEOLOGY. 

There is no more marked feature in the religion of 
our time, than the tendency to divorce Christian truth 
from the theological formularies in which it has long 
been embodied. Undoubtedly it shows in some of its 
shapes a decay of faith ; but when we carefully study 
the fact on all sides, such a solution cannot wholly ex- 
plain it. It appears not only in writers like Matthew 
Arnold, who find in Hebrew or Christian "literature" 
no dogma whatever, but in Protestant bodies, hitherto 
the stoutest defenders of their own confessions ; in the 
gradual decline of tenets, like those of predestination 
and reprobation, so often the war-cry of sects after 
the Reformation ; in movements toward the harmony 
of old school and new ; in the larger place given in 
theological education to doctrinal history, above the 
systems of one school or time; in the general indif- 
ference to controversial preaching; and even, I say it 
gladly, in the " unconscious philosophy" (for the 
" philosophy of the unconscious " plays a larger part 
in our Christianity than we know) of the stiffest 
Anglican, who calls himself the champion of dogmatic 
unity, but will give up all Articles and retreat to the 

303 



304 Epochs in Church History. 

" Nicene basis." We must surely see, therefore, in 
such a change the legitimate, though unripe fruit of 
Church history. It means that Protestanism has 
through a long, harsh experience reached a further 
step, and is learning its need of a unity of Christendom, 
which can never* come out of rival metaphysical sys- 
tems. That unity is far from an accomplished fact. 
It can never be found in the surrender of all creed. 
But it is, as I hold, to come, through His providence 
who guides the truth, out of the earnest struggle 
which is the distinctive feature of our age. In such a 
view of the tendency, a sound scholar can neither 
accept the notion of those who reject dogma, nor the 
equal error of those who will cure our scepticism by 
reviving the dogmatic tyranny which begot the revolt 
against it. The want of our Church education to-day 
is a thorough study of the mutual relations of revealed 
faith and theological science. It is an intricate subject ; 
but even a dear outline may reconcile honest thinkers, 
and perhaps help to cure some common mistakes of 
our Anglican theory. 

We must, then, at the outset, look at the Christian 
truth in each sphere of primitive faith and theological 
inquiry; for we can only thus know their harmony, 
and the cause of our misconceptions. It is the ground 
from which we begin all such study, that the religion 
of Christ was given in the form of a living history. 
Revelation contains the positive truth of Him who 



Christian Faith and Theology. 305 

came the divine Saviour of mankind. But it was no 
system of speculative wisdom concerning the nature 
of God, the mental or moral powers, such as is taught 
in the school of science ; it was the declaration of one 
fact, the redemption of men from sin and their fellow- 
ship as children of God. All the doctrines which are 
the teaching of Christianity, are to be viewed in the 
light of this central truth of redemption, as it opens 
in its manifold relations the knowledge of God as a 
Father, our moral condition, our duty, and our destiny. 
And as it is thus in its essence no philosophy, but a 
practical and living Gospel, so it is embodied for us 
in the New Testament, in that record which always 
preserves it as real history. We read its word as it 
fell from His own lips ; as it was incarnated in His own 
sinless person. That creed which He gave as the in- 
heritance of the Church, the name of Father, Son and 
Holy Ghost, was no metaphysical formula, but a seal 
of the faith into which all were to be " discipled " 
and baptized, as children of one Father and brethren 
of one household. Nor is this conception of primitive 
Christianity less plain as we pass to the Church of 
the Acts and Epistles. There is the same simple, 
living unity of belief; and although we see in the 
Pauline Epistles as well as elsewhere, the signs of an 
organized body, an "Apostles' teaching and fellow- 
ship," yet there is no theology in any just meaning of 
the word. The faith is no tradition in the sense of a 



306 Epochs in Church History 



digest of doctrines, of articles and confessions ; the 
epistles are the current historic writing of the early 
Church, and to be studied in their connection with 
the life of that age if we would know their worth to us. 
Such is the view of the Christian faith which divides 
us at the threshold from any who make it in its essence 
the revelation of a system of abstract doctrines. The 
difference is at the root. The one view changes it 
into a speculative theology in its original substance, or 
a traditional summa of the Church. This makes it 
more than doctrine, a divine history; no " Gospel of 
notions," but the Word in the conscience and life, of 
men. The facts of our sonship, our sin, our redemp- 
tion, of the incarnate life and grace of Christ are the 
same now as when they were given in the sacred his- 
tory. The catholicity of faith lies in the character of 
such a truth ; for only thus can it be held " every- 
where, always and by all." It cannot rest on council 
or creed as its ultimate ground. And it is because 
this fact is forgotten that the Scriptures have been 
made, instead of the book of divine history, the re- 
pertory of proof texts. I need not dwell on examples. 
Thus the Epistle to the Romans has been so often 
distorted into a system of " election " in the Cal- 
vinistic sense, or diluted into an Arminian theory 
of " contingency," when, if read in the light of true 
historic criticism, it unfolds the Catholic truth of the 
calling of redeemed men into one household of God in 



Christian Faith and Theology, 307 

Christ, instead of a little race-election in Abraham. 
Every doctrine, whether of the Trinity, the atone- 
ment, regeneration, eternal life and death, has been in 
one school or another taken out of this living connec- 
tion with Scripture, and identified with a system. If 
there be one fruitful result of Biblical science, it is 
that it has taught us to read the New Testament not 
as an arsenal of weapons for the defence of our later 
structures of doctrine or church polity, but in its own 
light as the history of a truth more divine than all 
" bodies of divinity." 

We can thus pass to the relation of revealed faith 
to theology. It is the necessary demand of the Chris- 
tian intellect, as it studies on manifold sides the prob- 
lems of the nature of God, of our human being, of 
eternal life, that it must have its scientific exposition. 
But a Christian theology has thus within itself two 
elements. It can never be a mere system of specula- 
tion, but must view such questions always in relation 
to its own central divine truth. Yet it must present 
this truth in the forms of human reasoning, and there- 
fore it must be mingled with the philosophic concep- 
tions and methods of its time. As such, therefore, 
theological science is a history, which we are to trace 
through the whole development of the Christian 
Church. It is not a fixed, unchanging revelation, nor 
is it the arbitrary dogma of an ecclesiastical body. 
But it is not on this account a mass of confused, 



308 Epochs in Church History. 

warring opinions ; it is the exposition of the one Word 
of God, as it has passed through the successive phases 
of Christian thought. It obeys the laws of orderly- 
science. There are thus certain guiding conditions of 
doctrinal growth. In the first place, there is an order 
of development in the character of revealed truth 
itself. Theology begins with the doctrine of the In- 
carnation, the nature of God in Christ. Its next step 
is the study of the nature of man in his original 
powers and sinful condition. This view must lead to 
the doctrine of redemption, the relation of God to 
man in the work of a mediator ; and it is last com- 
pleted in the relation of man to this revelation of 
grace. In this light the modern divisions of the 
science — theology, anthropology, soteriology — are 
verified by the study of doctrinal history. I shall 
only beg leave to differ in one weighty point. Our 
last division, which, as I shall show, belongs to 
Protestant thought, should be Christian ethics, em- 
bracing the whole domain of personal faith and the 
connection of the spiritual life with the Church as a 
social body. But this order of thought, again, has its 
expression in the successive periods of the Church. 
Theology finds in the peculiar genius and culture of 
each the soil of its growth. The subtle, speculative 
mind of the Greek, educated in the ideas of Plato ; 
the practical life of the Latin, nursed in the atmo- 
sphere of law ; the scholastic age, under the mastery 



Christian Faith and Theology. 309 

of Aristotelian logic ; the freer, more inward spirit of 
Protestantism give their stamp to the result. We see 
in each only a part in the whole of this theological 
process ; in each one-sided modes of inquiry and imper- 
fect gains. But there is no less essential unity. That 
unity is in the living faith of the Church ; and in the 
attainment, age after age, of clearer and more com- 
pleted knowledge, as the false dogmatisms, the partial 
systems, are sloughed off, while no positive truth is 
lost. Such is the true law of historic growth. It is 
not, as with Mr. Newman, the development of a mass 
of uncritical tradition in the Roman communion ; 
a theory which can twist a few sentences of Script- 
ure into the worship of Mary, or consecrate any 
fancies of the Fathers as Catholic verities. But 
it is the sound, reasonable study of the mind of 
the Church, its struggles, its patient inquiries, its 
triumphs ; one unbroken commentary on the mind of 
Christ. 

Such a view of the character of Christian theology 
we are now to verify in a rapid look at its history. It 
was the necessity of the Church, as it passed after the 
Apostolic time out of its unreflective childhood to 
riper thought, to come into contact with the existing 
ideas of Jewish and Gentile culture. There were 
speculative errors, such as we trace already in the 
Epistles to the Colossians and that of St. John, soon 
to ripen into full grown Gnostic schools ; there were 



310 Epochs in Church History. 

the strange admixtures of the Greek mind with the 
East in the Neo-Platonism of the time. It was in con- 
flict with these that the truth of Christ must strive, 
and win its just triumph over the intellect of the world, 
as well as over its conscience and life. Yet it is not at 
once we find the systematic fruits of such a growth. 
The earliest literature, beside the formation of the New 
Testament Canon, is seen in little else than the simple 
letters of the Apostolic Fathers. Nor do we have the 
up-building in any proper sense of a theology in the 
thinkers of the next period, like Clement, Origen, Ter- 
tullian, who were mainly busied with apologetics 
against the heathen philosophy, or in exposing the 
fantastic speculations which had ripened in the Gnos- 
tic sects. These are the Stromata, to use the phrase 
of Clement, out of which soon arises the clearer view 
of the fundamental ideas of a Christian theology. The 
true symbol of that unity which the Church had 
reached is t& be found in the Apostles' Creed. It is 
characteristic of it that it has no date, but is really 
the record of an oral confession, varying in its detail 
as we gather it from Irenaeus or Tertullian, yet sub- 
stantially the same. That symbol gives us the very 
lineaments of the childlike mind just passing to con- 
scious manhood. It is simple, positive, historic. We 
have only to compare it with the later creed of Nice, 
to see the years of reflective thought that lie between 
its plain declaration of the Father or the Christ of the 



Christian Faith and Theology. 311 

Gospels, and the scientific definitions of the " one sub- 
stance." 

But we observe now the distinct gathering of all 
the philosophic tendencies within the Church into one 
channel. It was in the question of the nature of God 
that the Greek intellect for ages had found the aim of 
its most subtle inquiry; and hence, both by the relig- 
ious and mental necessity of the time, the doctrine 
of the Incarnation absorbed the life of the Greek 
Church down to its decline. There are indeed through- 
out the pages of those Fathers many discussions of 
the nature of man, redemption and kindred truths ; 
perhaps I may say a richer vein of philosophic genius, 
as it was fed by the ideas of Plato, than in the sterner 
systems of the West. But the one lasting gift to the 
theology of the Church, the key of all those conflicts 
and triumphs, is in the doctrine of God in Christ. We 
see the two poles of opinion in the Ebionite, who 
regarded Christ on his human side as an emanation of 
the divine wisdom, and the Sabellian, who obscured 
the personality of Christ and made the Trinity a mode 
of manifestation ; but we trace in the early Fathers no 
full adjustment of the question, until Arianism brings 
into sharp antagonism the truth and the error. The 
mind of the Church had grown ripe for thorough defi- 
nition. It accepted the doctrine that the Son of 
God, the Saviour, can be no created being, but is the 
God-man, the Word made flesh. But the controversy, 



312 Epochs in Church History. 

although the work of theologians, was not merely a 
speculative thing; it was the clear statement of a 
truth, which lived in the faith of the whole body. 
There was thus a further step from the exposition of 
the doctrine to its fixed character as the symbol of the 
Church. Athanasius only gave voice to the universal 
conviction ; and the creed became an historical land- 
mark, to be yet further completed by the later deci- 
sions concerning the person and will of Christ. 

In this earliest example we have the principle of 
the method which we must apply to the general study 
of theology. It meets the two misconceptions of it. 
We see the untruth of the large class of critics down 
to Baur, who have sought to trace the doctrine of the 
Trinity to the infusion of Neo-Platonic ideas into the 
simpler religion. Undoubtedly the Christian the- 
ology was deeply indebted for its modes of specula- 
tive thought to the Greek wisdom ; and we find its 
conceptions of the divine Word, of substance and per- 
son, embodied in the creed. But the doctrine was not 
the creation of a new faith. It affirmed no more than 
the Gospels, that the Son of God was the only be- 
gotten, the Word in whom dwelt the fulness of the 
Father ; God of God ; Light of light. Yet, on the 
other hand, we are not to suppose that the doctrine 
of the Trinity in its defined theological form was held 
by the early believers. It was the wish of Jeremy 
Taylor that so subtle a phrase had never been intro- 



Christian Faith and Theology. 313 

duced into the Christian faith. The very words, sub- 
stance and person, are only finite efforts of our phi- 
losophy to comprehend the infinite nature of God. 
The living truth of the Incarnation, as it speaks from 
the person and sinless grace of the Son of God, is the 
object of faith ; and the minute questions of will and 
nature are only the bones of the theological skeleton. 
There may be divines like Newman, who in an ecstasy 
of scholastic devotion calls the Athanasian Creed a 
hymn of praise ; but our ideas of hymnology are quite 
different. We do not confound faith and science, but 
give each its place. It is thus we understand the 
unity of the Christian truth with the theology of 
Nice. It was the purpose of Bishop Bull in his De- 
fensio, to show the consensus of the Church in regard 
to this doctrine ; but the defect of his reasoning, al- 
though essentially true, is that, while he proves in 
earlier or later writers one orthodox belief, he does 
not point out the plain differences in the growth of 
thought before the Nicene time. It is only partly 
true that the definitions were called out by heresies, 
since much of church opinion was no heresy before the 
decisions, but what Athanasius called the " athletic " 
of the time. Justin Martyr and Origen leaned toward 
the theory of emanation. Athanasius himself, in one 
passage, inclines to the Monothelite view; and his 
ideas of the personality of the Holy Spirit are very 

ambiguous. There can be no greater error than the 
14 



314 Epochs in Church History. 

notion, which has been fastened on many minds by 
our Oxford school, that the doctrine of the Trinity 
was a theological deposit, held by the "concurrent 
authority " of the Church and settled by the vote of 
an episcopal majority. The revelation of Father, Son 
and Holy Spirit has its fullest witness in the record of 
the New Testament ; and hence this symbol remains 
for us, beyond all formularies, the greatest monument 
of doctrinal history. We see in it the character of a 
theological age; but we keep it as alike venerable, be- 
cause it embodies the deepest truth of Holy Scripture, 
and because it declares the unity of the Church, while 
it was yet unbroken by discords. 

Such is the law we may carry through the whole 
after history. Our sketch must be brief. We turn to 
the period of the Latin Church ; and in accordance 
with the Western mind, less speculative, educated in 
the legal training of Rome, is the character of the 
system it builds. The problem of man, of freedom 
and divine grace, of sin as the universal fact of history, 
employs its master intellect Augustin. His doctrine 
of the organic unity of the race, as the inheritor of 
evil, and its restored unity in Christ, the head of 
humanity, is the root-truth which grew into the 
whole theology of his own Church, and passed down to 
the Protestantism of Calvin. But its defect is equally 
clear. The Platonism of the great teacher led him to 
mingle his ideas of substance with his conception of 



Christian Faith and Theology. 315 

man, and thus to adopt that notion of corporate life 
which ended at last in an arbitrary theory of inability, 
of irresistible grace, and regeneration through the 
sacrament. The personal and ethical side of the truth 
was left incomplete. It is the next step in this de- 
velopment of the Latin system we see in the theology 
of Anselm. His doctrine of the atonement is the 
application of the same profound view of human 
nature. It answers the question, Cur Dens Homo? 
Why did God become man ? But we have in this 
severe thinker not only the idea of his greater master, 
we find the stamp of that forensic education which 
Maine has ingeniously noticed in his work on Ancient 
Law. Much of the theological technology which we 
use to-day with little thought of its source, was so be- 
queathed to the literature of the Church. The view 
of Anselm was a noble contribution to Christian doc- 
trine. It presented the sacrifice of Christ as necessary 
in the work of redemption ; but it regarded it only as 
a penalty of divine law ; it did not view it as the free 
offering of Christ's love, nor did it touch the personal 
relation of the penitent, purified conscience, through 
which we receive the life of the Redeemer within us. 
Thus the error went with the truth. We perceive its 
fruits in the scholastic system which followed it. We 
are never to lose sight of the wonderful intellectual 
power of tha tage, or the debt we owe to its thinkers, 
from Aquinas to the Mystics, who prepared the way 



316 Epochs in Church History. 

for a more spiritual teaching; but the Church had 
reached the point where its faith had become a meta- 
physical Summa, encrusted in Aristotelian logic ; and 
its religion a corporate life, fed by the grace of sacra- 
ments. 

We are thus prepared to know the meaning of the 
Protestant theology. No blinder error can be named 
than that which condemns the Reformation as the 
overturn of positive truth. The twin doctrines which 
are its corner-stone, that of justification by faith and 
the sufficiency of Scripture, were the necessary com- 
pletion of Christian theology ; the onward step in the 
ideas which had been working in the mind of the 
Church ; the advance of the conscience and spiritual 
life beyond the sacramental system of the past. There 
was not a positive doctrine of God, of sin, of atone- 
ment, of grace, which was rejected by the Reformers. 
Indeed their error was, that they had not outgrown 
the habits of scholastic thought ; and while they broke 
the ecclesiastical fetters, the sterner thinkers like Cal- 
vin retained many such tenets as that of absolute de- 
crees, bequeathed from Augustin. The theological 
activity of Protestantism has been its evil and good 
together. It has sought unity in a metaphysical 
Christianity ; and its rival confessions have broken 
its spiritual life. Yet while we are not to defend its 
divisions, we can see its real character with clearer 
eyes than a Bossuet in his Variations, or the narrow 



Christian Faith and Theology. 317 

Churchman of our time. We can see under its partial 
systems the one essential aim which links it with the 
whole progress of doctrinal history. The ethical side 
of Christianity, as I said at the outset, which embraces 
the relation of the personal faith to the Church, the 
free study of the Word of God to authority, is the 
work of Protestantism. It cannot return to the unity 
of an infallible body. That end can only come when 
it has passed beyond its speculative differences to a 
truer conception of organic unity than is found in any 
of its divisions. It must learn that Christianity is not 
shut within Dort or Augsburg. But its doctrinal and 
spiritual activities are part of the life of the Church, 
and there can be no reunion of Christendom which is 
not the result of its movement. 

With this study of the history of doctrine, we are 
now ready to sum those principles which we can ap- 
ply to the questions that concern our own time. We 
have learned the harmony existing between Christian 
faith and theological inquiry. There has been and is 
in all ages an unchanged unity of revealed truth. It 
abides in the Word of God, which contains all that is 
necessary to salvation ; it abides by the presence of 
that Spirit, who bears witness in each conscience to 
the same facts of sin and need, the same gift of love 
in a Redeemer, the same laws of duty, and the same 
hope of life eternal. But there is with these also a 
constant growth of Christian learning, which is em- 



318 Epochs in Church History. 

bodied in Biblical criticism and doctrinal science. 
These three elements, the Word, the spiritual life, 
the tradition of the Church, make up the whole of the 
existing Christianity in each successive period. There 
is no contradiction between them, but the relation is 
the same as in all spheres of knowledge. Science reg- 
isters the movement of the stars, but it does not cre- 
ate the stars ; and while a Laplace makes his map 
of the heavens, the seaman guides his ship over the 
waters by the same light. Christian science does not 
create or add any truth which is not essentially in the 
revelation, but it has opened and is still opening its 
fuller meaning. Doctrinal unity, therefore, is to be 
found in the connection of its truths with each other. 
There can be no fixed or infallible character in the 
system of one age. The Word of God cannot be shut 
up by its interpretations ; nor can the Church claim a 
" concurrent authority " with it. The truth must be 
always open to criticism, and the imperfect ideas of 
the past corrected by fresher and fuller inquiry. No 
age can exactly copy the modes of thought of another 
older one, or have precisely the same problems before 
it, but it must receive the wisdoms of the fathers in 
their adjustment with its own further results. We 
cannot reproduce the speculative or practical life 
which created an Athanasius or an Augustin ; we have 
not the exact errors of an Arius or a Pelagius. But 
it is this very change in which lies at once our prog- 



Christian Faith and Theology. 319 

ress, yet our continaity of growth. The commen- 
taries of learning pass downward to us ; the decisions 
of the wise are embodied in confessions and symbolic 
books for the preservation of a sound belief, and have 
their due authority. We do not now accept the al- 
legorical method of Augustin as our canon of exege- 
sis ; we reject much of the reasoning of Basil or Anselm; 
but we receive whatever of genuine learning they have 
left us. Such is the plain principle of a Christian sci- 
ence ; and where this harmony exists of a free intelli- 
gence with the recognition of a wise authority, we 
have the healthy condition of the Church. 

But we learn, again, the cause of all discord between 
faith and theology in the loss of this relation. Let 
the traditional system be put instead of this living 
growth, or let the speculative view of one age or school 
be received as the absolute rule of faith, and the re- 
sult is a separation between doctrine and life. It is 
as needful for us to read this fact in the history of the 
past as to read its harmony. We see it in each time 
when the formative power of Christian theology has 
become withered. It was so with the Greek Church, 
when the truth of the Incarnation had been changed 
into a shadow fight of metaphysical subtleties, when, 
as Basil describes it, the shopman in Constantinople 
gabbled about, substance and person, and orthodox 
bigots like Cyril upheld their metaphysics by an- 
athema. Heraclius was busy in reconciling the Mono- 



320 Epochs in Church History. 

physite quarrel at the hour when the debased empire 
fell. Orthodoxy had no life to keep the courtier or 
the people from the most shameless vices. It was so 
with the close of the Latin age. When the Real 
Presence meant a scholastic dogma, there was no life 
of Christ in the faith or morals of the worshippers. 
Nor must we forget, again, that there is the most 
direct step from such dogmatism to rationalism. Ra- 
tionalism is only the decomposition of the dead tradi- 
tion. Each stage of the process is plain. The worn- 
out doctrine loses its hold on devout minds ; it changes 
first to a mysticism, which keeps the formulas but 
gives them a free interpretation, and the bold denial 
soon follows. Nothing is more striking than the fact 
that the Latin Church, with all its boast of dogmatic 
unity, produced within its own bosom, from Erigena 
to Pomponatius, a series of speculative heresies, from 
pantheism to the most undisguised materialism, far 
beyond any that have sprung out of the soil of Ger- 
many. Luther, in his vehement outcry against the 
school theology, only echoes the protest of our own 
Latimer and Coverdale. Yet the same process was 
seen in the Church of Luther, and the petrified the- 
ology of justification created its formal believers, fol- 
lowed by its unbelievers. We have, again, in the the- 
ology of New England the Puritan repetition of the 
scholastic age, when the hard-headed people were fed 
on the " five points," and the treatise on " the will," 



Christian Faith and Theology. 321 

based on Locke, not St. Paul, was the orthodox Gospel. 
Unitarianism was the robust reaction against it, and 
did its work of negation well. But I will not add ex- 
amples. It is the principle we too often forget in our 
study of theology. The most obstinate vice of divines 
is in identifying the empiric system of a time with 
Revelation. It seems a strange absurdity to-day, 
when we think how the controversy of the Eucharist 
is kept up as fiercely as ever, and some Doctor irrefra- 
gabilis teaches his theory question of impanation or 
objective presence ; yet the whole rests on a scholastic 
notion of substance which has been surrendered ever 
since the day of Descartes. Theology takes the de- 
funct metaphysical ideas and embalms them in its 
mummy case. We might apply the same test to many 
of our views of doctrine. It is hence that the divorce 
comes between philosophic science and traditional 
learning, until it ends at last in utter unbelief. 

In this light we can justly solve the problem of our 
own time. It is an age of conflicting opinions, and 
we are sorely in need of unity ; yet if our study of the 
past has proved anything, it is surely that our strife 
does not betoken the decay of Christian truth, but 
only that we are passing through a transition process. 
We have seen the positive meaning and aim of the 
Protestant theology. What is it, then, which modern 
Protestanism seeks? It is the true reconcilement be- 
tween personal faith and doctrinal system, between 
14* 



322 Epochs in Church History. 

the essence of Christian revelation and the forms in 
which it has been embodied, between the principles of 
freedom and authority. And are any of the phenom- 
ena of such a period strange or unaccountable ? 
Surely it is a sign of real progress that there is a dis- 
position to give up the rival and sectarian creeds of 
the past. It is a time when our divines are learning 
that the technology of their systems does not touch 
the grander issues of Christianity, that they have 
other work to do than to settle the extinct errors of 
Pelagianism, or the disputes of moral ability. We 
meet with the boldest forms of unbelief, yet even 
these have done in this respect an undesigned benefit ; 
for they have taught us that the battle is not now of 
substance and person, or of the two wills in Christ, 
but whether Christ be a myth or a historic personage 
at all ; whether in truth there be a personal God or a 
resurrection. I hail it, therefore, as the healthiest of 
symptoms, that our theological literature is meeting the 
need in a living way, instead of giving a dull adherence 
to its traditional methods. The conflict is no longer 
at the outposts, but at the gates of the citadel. It is 
this unity in a common Christianity which to-day 
draws together the noblest thinkers of all communions, 
as the invasion of" the great king" made Athens and 
Sparta one Hellas. There is no less positive truth 
than before, but there are deeper questions than Nice, 
or Trent, or Westminster can answer. There can be 



Christian Faith and Theology. 323 

only one way in which the cure of our confusions can 
be found. It is in the growth of a sound Biblical 
learning. It is in such a study of doctrinal history, 
as has been given us by a Miiller, a Dorner, and many 
among our later English scholars. It is in the wise 
adjustment of revealed truth with the researches of 
science. It is in the more comprehensive knowledge 
of the history of the Church, as it is knit with the life 
of Christian civilization. If we have so grasped the 
relation of our Christianity to the mind and want of 
our time, we shall be in no danger of losing our hope 
as to the issue of its strifes, for we shall know that 
these are the conditions of its life. 

And such a view, last of all, settles for us the whole 
question, which perplexes and divides so many, as to 
the principle of dogmatic authority. What, it is 
asked, shall be our ground amid this chaos? Is there 
any authority in the Church ? And if so, where and 
what is it ? I have answered it already in the whole 
structure of my argument, and I need only gather it 
up. If it be true that such unity exists, and has never 
been lost, in the essential character of the truth, we have 
the wise and just authority we need. The Church re- 
tains the symbols of its faith. It witnesses to and 
keeps this unity, this catholic unity above all partial 
systems. I claim that in thus expounding the right 
relation of faith to theology I am affirming the very 
principle which is embodied in the creed, the liturgy, 



324 Epochs in Church History. 

the history of the English Communion ; the principle 
by which it is justly superior to all Protestant bodies, 
by which it stands to-day, if we be true to it, as it 
stood at the Reformation. It upheld the cardinal 
truths of Protestantism ; it denied the infallibility of 
councils, and made the Word of God its sole arbiter; 
it maintained the principle of a personal, justifying 
faith against the sacramental errors of the Latin sys- 
tem. Yet it kept the symbols of the Apostles and of 
Nice as its great monuments ; it made its Articles 
broad enough to join Calvinist, Lutheran, Arminian ; 
it avoided the secondary questions which split the 
bodies of the Continent into theological sects. Such 
was the spirit and law it bequeathed to us. Such is 
the true idea of catholic unity and authority. But it 
is one we should be very careful to distinguish from 
the notion of dogmatic authority fastened on us by 
that later Oxford theology, to which we owe, alas ! 
the worst misconceptions of the Church. What is it 
that our self-styled Anglo-Catholic divines teach as 
their catholicon against the discords of the time? We 
are gravely told that our Church stands apart from 
Rome and from all Protestant sects as the keeper of 
the fixed, unchangeable deposit of doctrine which 
was settled by the Nicene council and those which 
followed it to the close of the conciliar age, and has 
been duly handed down to us through the episcopate. 
The " Nicene basis" and the episcopacy, these are the 



Christian FaitJi and Theology. 325 

centre of unity. Nay, we read in a late consecration 
sermon that it has been always the faith of the 
Church, that this sacred treasure of doctrinal truth 
rests chiefly in the guardianship of the episcopal 
authority. Such a theory, I can only say, is, instead 
of a catholic principle, its very contradiction. I 
gladly recognize the element of truth it has in it. It 
is indeed our just position that we believe in the unity 
of the faith, not in a Christianity of warring theolo- 
gies. We have a thorough reverence for the symbol 
of Nice. But when we identify catholic doctrine with 
the dogmatic decision of one past age ; when we would 
ignore all problems which since the councils have em- 
ployed the minds of Latin and Protestant Christen- 
dom ; when we deny all progress from the past to the 
present, dismiss all questions of Scriptural criticism, 
of theology or ethics, and fall back on the traditional 
deposit of the Nicene time, we have not the element- 
ary idea of what theology, or history, or catholicity 
means. Such a notion is more absurd than the Rom- 
ish theory. The Roman Church believes at least in a 
living interpreter ; this believes in no truth, no Holy 
Spirit in the body, but the dead remains of a truth 
which was shut up forever in the infallibility of the 
councils. Indeed I know no source from which this 
theory can be borrowed, save from the Babylonian 
Talmud. " When Moses came down from Sinai," 
say the Rabbis^'he recited once the sacred law to 



326 Epochs in CJiurch History. 

Aaron with his own comment ; then he recited it to 
the two sons of Aaron, Eleazer and Ithamar; and as 
they filed to right and left, the seventy elders entered 
and Moses recited it to them. Thus the law was 
heard four times by Aaron, thrice by his sons, and 
twice by the elders ; after which, Moses retiring, 
Aaron repeated it four times; he retiring, his sons 
repeated it ; and when they had gone, the elders 
repeated it to the people; and so the assembly heard 
the law and its' commentary four times." Thus the 
Nicene Fathers received the deposit, handed it by 
turns to each council, each council to the Bishops, 
and it has been safely kept in the episcopal casket 
unto this day. I have not so read Church history. I 
have, as I trust, deep reverence for the doctrines of 
the Church, but they are not a deposit. I have true 
respect for the episcopal office, and wherever I find 
any in the past or present among the masters of 
learning, I revere them ; but I am not sure that the 
special grace given in consecration is always of the 
sort which is needed for the " Ecclesia docens" If 
such a theory of dogmatic authority be held by us, it 
will stifle the study of the Scriptures, and turn our 
theology into a slavish tradition. But we may hope 
that the day of this miscalled catholicity is passing. 
We may hope that a more critical knowledge of his- 
tory is taking the place of that which has been gleaned 
from the Oxford library of the Fathers; that we shall 



Christian Faith and Theology. 327 

study afresh, the thinkers of the continental Reforma- 
tion, with the masculine minds of England in the same 
great period ; that we shall look for the principles of 
our Church beyond one school of Anglo-Catholic 
divines ; that the communion which has produced a 
Hooker, a Cudworth, a Whichcote, a Butler, is to have 
again as sound a learning, and to be, as it was meant 
to be, the leader in the reconciliation of Christendom. 



JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 

I SHALL speak to-night, brethren and friends, of the 

relation of Judaism to Christianity. I have felt that 

such a study will not only, at this day, have a fresh 

interest for us as devout scholars, but will bear in the 

truest way on the work of your Society. There has 

been, I may well say, no time in the history of our 

faith when we were abler than now to open with all 

the lights of older and newer learning this wonderful 

book of the Hebrew Revelation. It is in this domain 

that the keenest questions of a critical age have been 

raised, and unbelief has sought to undermine the 

whole fabric. We open now the book of revelation as 

it witnesses its divine character. And let me, at the 

outset, state the argument as it lies before us. It is in 

Christianity, then, we have the one religion whose truth 

answers the wants of the race, and which truth is knit 

with its destiny. Christ is the centre of revelation. 

That looks forward to the close, and backward to the 

opening of history. That revelation is given us in the 

two sacred books of the old and new covenants. They 

are bound together in one volume as parts of one 

great whole. Yet though there is this unity in their 

328 



Judaism and Christianity. 329 

common relation to Jesus Christ and his perfect truth, 
there lies between them this one grand difference, that 
the first is but a preparatory and partial religion. It 
is in that light we are to study the Hebrew record. 
And it is because this historic character has been too 
often forgotten that it has been misinterpreted. Mod- 
ern criticism has passed by its essential truth, has 
looked only on its passing features, its outward ritual, 
its imperfect morality, and pronounced it no more 
than one of the religions of a human past. And it 
has been defended as often with the same superficial 
spirit, as if this preparatory revelation were designed 
to be a scientific treatise on the creation, the problem 
of races, and all the facts of early history. Unbelief 
has thus too often found in our theories of the Bible 
the seeming apology for its assaults. It is, then, to 
show the true structure and purpose of that Old Tes- 
tament that I seek. The religion of Christ, I repeat, 
is the key to the ancient volume. But in proportion 
as a Christian science has explored the record with 
a fearless honesty, while it has given up many fancies 
of past interpreters, the supernatural truth has stood 
forth clearer and stronger. As we pass in review this 
Divine history, we shall see it linked with the whole 
plan of God in the training of the race ; we shall see 
its faith, its worship, its social movements pointing to 
the fulness of times ; and in that central light we shall 
know our spiritual heritage, our perfect law of liberty. 



330 Epochs in Church History. 

With such a design, we open the Book of the Old 
Covenant, and turn at once to the fact which makes 
this Hebrew people of such worth to us as the wit- 
nesses of Revelation. It is a history that stands alone 
in the past. A wandering herdsman of Semitic race 
leads his tribe from the Chaldean plains ; and, after re- 
peated migrations, and a long serfdom in Egypt, it is 
found a full-grown people in a corner of the world 
near the Mediterranean sea. It passes through the 
earlier form of a commonwealth into a brilliant orient- 
al monarchy ; and at last, after years of discord, of 
captivity under the changing empires of East and 
West, after the later hierarchy from the day of Ezra, 
it is broken in pieces, and becomes as at the first, a 
homeless and scattered race. 

And what is it that makes this people of Israel so 
remarkable ? Was it a leading power in the political 
or social history of that Eastern world ? No. Egypt, 
Persia tower above it as Caucasus above an ant hill. 
Was it a teacher of mankind in ancient learning ? No. 
India had its speculative wisdom, Greece its native 
growth in letters and arts, which have entered as " a 
possession forever" into the training of Europe. But 
this people was in a rude, half cultivated state, almost 
the scorn of the civilized nations with whom it came 
in contact ; and its only classic literature, contained 
in the books of the Old Testament, can hardly give it 
the fame of an intellectual race. The time is past 



Judaism and Christianity. 33 r 

when our fanciful scholars were wont to derive all the 
treasures of natural and moral science from the flrin- 
cipia of Moses. What is the secret of this history ? 
It is, that in the keeping of this obscure Semitic 
family there was the knowledge of the one spiritual 
and living God. Look over the record of all the great 
nations of East or West ; study the whole develop- 
ment of religious thought from the morning twilight 
of history out of which Abraham emerges with his 
family, and it is the witness of a universal Polytheism. 
The " wisdom of the Egyptians," led only to the wor- 
ship of a divine power enshrined in the crocodile and 
the ibis ; the races of Asia had every shape of super- 
stition, from the loftier adoration of sun and star to 
the grossest rites of the Syrian. The progress of nat- 
ure-religion was a slow and painful one from the first 
notion of fetish worship, the coarse Pantheism that 
identified God with tree, river, and brute, to the con- 
ception of a personal mind above nature. Yet it never 
reached the belief of the Divine Unity ; and still less 
the moral idea on which it rests. But here in this 
nook of Palestine we have the highest truth which 
even the philosophic thought of a Plato grasped as a 
vague abstraction. It is no scientific monotheism, it 
is the religious faith of a people. God is the one, 
personal, living Jehovah. They claim to be His 
chosen in virtue of this belief ; separate from all 
others, as witnesses and keepers of this one revelation. 



33 2 Epochs in Church History, 

We pause then, here, and ask what shall explain the 
anomaly? Whence came this primeval doctrine? 
Was it, as some of the early neologists maintained, a 
mysterious lore, imparted to the Hebrew leader by the 
priesthood of Egypt ? I have observed that the late re- 
searches into the temples of Thebes have brought to 
light in an inscription that grand saying of Moses, " I 
Am that I Am." It might seem at first sight that it was 
borrowed. But the fact remains, that this doctrine of 
God was in no sense whatever the religious belief 
of the people ; it was a Pantheistic notion of the 
priest. Perhaps that Egyptian inscription may have 
been the memorial of some older traditions. Never 
could the Hebrew faith, the faith incorporate in the 
whole national life, have been of such a source. It 
must have been an original. No other people could 
have furnished it. There remains the favorite theory 
of our modern orientalists. It was, we are told, the 
stern ethical thought of the Semitic race, which led to 
this conception of the unity of God, while the Indo- 
Persian fancy revelled in its dream of Polytheism. 
But, unhappily for such theorists, these Hebrews 
stand alone among the Semitic people as monotheists ; 
others of their stock held the grossest Baal worship ; 
and the Arab, the cousin of the Hebrew, was a Pagan, 
until Mohammed borrowed from Jewish books his 
doctrine of the Divine unity. To complete the refu- 
tation, the Persian, who comes nearest the Hebrew in 



Judaism and Christianity. 333 

his ideas of a supreme God and his hatred of idols, 
was no Semite. Was it again, the discovery of a 
Moses in the vision of his own solitary thought ? It 
were to suppose that in the dawn of human in- 
tellect he could reach a height beyond any in the 
ripest age. But besides, I repeat, it is no doctrine of 
a sage ; it is the faith of a people. None could ever 
have imparted such a truth, unless there were a corre- 
sponding culture of the whole social mind. If there 
were still wanting evidence, it lies here, that this sub- 
lime revelation of the Jehovah, the " I Am that I Am," 
was from the first to last above the religious level of 
the people themselves. The best Hebraist of our 
time has shown that before the days of Abraham they 
were idolaters, believing in the gods of the hills and 
plains ; and all along, in spite of the truth vouchsafed 
them, they were lapsing into idolatry ; they set up the 
calf under the shadow of Horeb ; they grieved the 
Most High with hill altars and images ; and only by 
the sternest discipline was their faith preserved. One 
only key can unlock this riddle. We say with Muller, 
" How is the fact to be explained, that the three great 
religions of the world — Judaism, Mohammedanism, 
Christianity — in which the unity of the Deity forms 
the keynote, are of Semitic origin? We are content 
to answer that it was by a special Divine revelation." 
And here I must not omit one of the latest theories 
of a brilliant writer, Mr. Arnold, which has startled 



334 Epochs in Church History. 

the sober critics of the Old Testament. It is his 
claim that the Hebrew believed in a power of right- 
eousness, in his own vague words, " that makes for 
righteousness," but in no personal God. I confess 
my amazement at such a criticism. To describe a 
half cultured people like that of the Mosaic age as 
capable of a high abstract moral idea like this, nay, of 
building a national religion on it ; and again, to pass 
over the passages on every page which show their in- 
tense faith in a living, a present Jehovah and Judge, 
is so bold a novelty of opinion that one can hardly 
reply save by asking if the critic were in sane mind. 
Yet there is one grand truth, apart from this ex- 
travagance, which we may glean from his views, and 
which gives to the faith of this Hebrew people in God 
another distinctive feature above all heathen races. 
He was the Power of Righteousness. The gods of 
the nations from Egypt to Greece were personifica- 
tions of human passions. He was impersonal in this, 
that He stood above these idols of the fancy, alone in 
his absolute, unshared, awful purity. 

But we must pass to the further view of this He- 
brew polity. It has not only such a faith, but we find 
a social and religious structure upbuilt on it. The 
central feature is a code of moral law. We are told 
that God wrote it ; is it worthy of Him ? We turn 
anew to the record. That Decalogue stands alone, 
rising like Sinai above the desert of ancient history. 



Judaism and Christianity. 335 

It teaches the being of the one, spiritual God ; the 
strict exclusion of idol worship ; the reverence of the 
holy name ; the day of social rest ; and last, as seems 
probable, among the religious commandments in the 
first table, the honor of parents. It teaches, again, 
the duties of man to man, a social ethics, not in scien- 
tific form, but embracing all the great relations of life. 
There is reared on this code the whole plan of a 
Divine commonwealth. At first glance it seems in- 
deed to contain much of childish admixture, a minute 
ceremonial of worship, feast-day, fast-day, and purify- 
ing. But if we study it from the only true, the his- 
toric point of view, we find a perfect fitness to the 
development of this people. All these rites have their 
use ; some directly religious, some, like the rules of 
food, of washing, given for a sanitary purpose. Nor 
does the ritual ever hide the moral framework. Here 
is the first and purest type of a commonwealth in 
history ; with its elective council of judges ; its priest- 
hood, strictly unlike any ruling caste of Oriental 
growth ; its prophetic order, which, as has been strik- 
ingly shown, held the element of republican liberty ; 
here is a basis of social distribution of land ; provision 
for the poor, the widow, the stranger ; here, while as 
with all early peoples slavery is permitted, a whole- 
some law guards it against perpetuity or abuse; and, 
everywhere, the spirit of a large, loving humanity re- 
deems the barbarism which belongs to the time. Turn 



336 Epochs in Church History. 

to the national annals of that people, and you see im- 
perfections enough. You see a savage ferocity ; you 
see the same narrow hatred of other races ; you see 
in a Samuel a heroism linked with the stern manners 
of an early age, and in a David the sad stains of 
Oriental vices. But amidst all this you see that pure 
and holy law, and the human history is the very foil 
that reveals the divine. We must so measure it, not 
by an ideal or a Christian standard ; but as the history 
of a rude people 's growth, and in this light primitive 
history offers no comparison. 

We pause again at this second step, and ask the 
origin of such a polity ? Was it in the sudden work 
of the Hebrew statesmen in the wilderness ? As well 
ask if one hand reared the pyramids. It were to sup- 
pose a miracle far greater than all which neology re- 
jects. Nor is it reasonable to believe it borrowed, 
since our latest study proves that no other early 
nation could have lent it. Here or there a feature, as 
the rite of circumcision, may point to a common origin 
with Asiatic nations beyond this ; but the whole 
structure of the decalogue and the national polity is 
original. We turn again to the modern solution. It 
is held to be the later romance of Hebrew writers, in 
the age when they wished to represent to Israel an 
ideal picture of the past. But this solution cannot ex- 
plain it. Whatever the date of the Pentateuch, as a 
written compilation, there are in it primitive records 



Judaism and Christianity. 337 

so marked in their very character as to be incapable 
of after invention. The Law itself, not only in the 
simple grandeur of its truth, but even in the form of 
the two stone tables ; the early council of the seventy ; 
the subordination of the priesthood, so unlike the 
later sacerdotal state ; the division of clean and un- 
clean meats ; the Sabbath and the great sacrifices ; all 
these are traceable to the primeval time. If the books 
containing this polity were lost in their complete 
form, we could construct the Mosaic system from 
these colossal remains, as a Cuvier constructed the 
mammoth from a few bones. But more than this, to 
think it the ideal romance of some later time of Ezra, 
is to suppose that after the Commonwealth had passed 
into a priestly State, such a spirit of Hebrew freedom 
could have survived to describe it, or such a picture 
of the forgotten polity could have been accepted as 
Divine, and incorporated into the sacred books. No. 
A sceptical fancy never suggested a slenderer theory. 
Nothing save the fresh, primeval draught of the God- 
taught artist could have been its original. 

With such a study we may gather these unmatched 
facts together, and ask, nay, demand their explana- 
tion, on any ground save that of special Revela- 
tion. It matters not to dispute of any secondary 
questions. It matters not whether the cosmogony of 
Moses can be harmonized with the results of science, 
or whether there be discrepancies in the historic 
15 



338 Epochs in Church History. 

record. They do not touch this inquiry. The Bible 
is not given to be a treatise of astronomy, or geology, 
and is not, therefore, to be weighed in any such scales, 
by either its critics or defenders ; but it was meant to 
be the record of certain supernatural truths, the rev- 
elation of the one Maker and Ruler ; of the fact of 
moral evil, the covenant of redemption, the history of 
Divine Law. I plant the argument there. If neology 
cannot overturn these foundations of supernatural 
fact, it has done nothing, and older or newer unbe- 
lief will dash the surges of its assault against them 
in vain. 

And now from this central point we may open at 
once the whole character of that history. We go 
back to the night when Abraham stands in the soli- 
tary plain, and hears the Divine voice, " My covenant 
is with thee, and thou shalt be father of many na- 
tions." It was the plan of God to redeem the world, 
and therefore He made this little people witness and 
keeper of the truth on which the destiny of mankind 
must rest. There was no trivial purpose in the Provi- 
dence that chose an obscure corner of Judea, apart 
from the movements of the social world. We see its 
wisdom. It was so this people of God could be pre- 
served, as in some sheltered bay, from the storms that 
swept over the vast ocean of Oriental life, wave on 
wave of a material civilization, a godless empire, each 
swallowed by its successor. We need not, with the 



Judaism and Christianity, 339 

narrow theory of many older Christian historians, 
look on the heathen world as having no place in the 
Divine plan; but rather recognize in each of the great 
kingdoms a step in that universal development, ripen- 
ing at last in Christian civilization. India and Egypt 
gave their early science ; Greece its immortal ideas, 
its art, its social freedom ; Rome its fabric of law, 
which passed into the life of modern Europe. But we 
may none the less acknowledge in this Hebrew race 
the special deposit of that revelation, which was of 
more moment than all else to the progress of the 
world. In such a view the narrower features of this 
ancient polity have their true vindication. Such 
jealous severance from other nations kept alive the 
social and domestic virtues, the family bond of the 
children of Israel. Their ritual, Sabbath, feast-day 
and Temple, were a grand symbolic history, as a 
pictorial Bible to the child, wherein they read the 
truths they could not yet grasp in their spiritual 
meaning. In comparison with all others, this Hebrew 
religion was most spiritual. It was not yet time for 
the Gospel. It was the age of law. It was the father 
chastening his children. It was law, the school- 
master, or in the truer reading, the paidagogus, 
the slave leading the child by the hand to Christ, 
training the wayward intellect, holding up the 
tables of moral duty to the popular conscience, 
winning by outward promises, scourging with out- 



340 Epochs in Church History. 

ward penalties, making ready for the coming manhood 
of the world. 

We thus reach the crowning feature of the system. 
It was the preparation day of Israel for Christ. If 
in any other light we study that history, it is an utter 
enigma. It cannot explain itself. That so unparal- 
leled a development should take place in a corner of 
our earth, merely for the social growth of an insignifi- 
cant race, is a harder marvel for neology than all Rev- 
elation claims. Christianity alone solves Judaism. The 
Hebrew religion, in the perfect image of Coleridge, is 
a transparency, dark and meaningless if seen from 
without, but place in it the lamp of Christianity, and 
each color, each line, comes out in harmony. And 
thus this history is a prophecy, in a much nobler 
sense than many interpreters make it, who pry pain- 
fully into every exact Messianic detail of the record. 
We should study it by the large law of historic Reve- 
lation. That Messianic faith, so stamped on this 
people, was the assurance in the whole national mind 
of a destiny beyond themselves, as keepers of a divine 
truth ; and as the decay of commonwealth and king- 
dom brought disappointment, it only grew stronger 
through captivity and death, till it became the fixed 
idea of the nation. The Hebrews lived in the time 
to come. Like their language, they had no present 
tense, only past and future. There great error was, 
that they did not comprehend their history as a future 



Judaism and Christianity. 341 

beyond the national theocracy; and so, at last, the 
sacerdotal state of Ezra and the Maccabees became 
only a petrified institution. Yet with all their bigot- 
ry and Pharisaic tradition, they did their work, and, 
when the new conditions of a " better covenant " 
made them no longer need it, the Hebrew life passed 
away. But the structure remained, and yet remains, 
like those lower courses of stone which the traveller 
sees in the walls of Jerusalem, under the later pile of 
Christian or Saracen architecture, still pointing back 
to the day of a Solomon ; it stands unmingled with 
the relics of ancient idolatry, unbroken amidst the 
changes of time or men. 

Such is Judaism. As we thus study it, we recog- 
nize the purpose of God. Wonderful people ! Where, 
in the whole history of the past, is there one that has 
so shaped the course of civilization, as this race of 
Israel ? Where in the universal empires that have 
shaken the earth, from those who have left their half 
deciphered names on pyramid and temple to the 
Caesars, one so lasting as this ? Where in the treas- 
ures of classic philosophy or letters, is there a gift like 
this single Book of the Hebrew Scriptures ? Where 
a record of the primeval secrets of our human race 
like the Genesis ? Where such songs of praise and 
penitence as in that Psalter, which Luther called " a 
book of all saints," whose voices still rise as freshly 
as at the beginning under the roof of the Christian 



34 2 Epochs in Church History. 

Temple ? Where such majestic thought as in Isaiah ; 
such tender grief and love as in Jeremy ; such an ut- 
terance of faith, of spiritual freedom, as in that line 
of prophets who cast the last sunset rays along the 
fading horizon of Israel ? But more than all, He who 
was born the Christ, the God-man, the Saviour, was of 
the lineage of David ; a Jewish mother, blessed among 
women, nursed Him ; Jewish hearts loved Him ; and 
while the temple is fallen, the glory of the Son of 
God still hallows His cradle and His sepulchre. 

It is, then, my brethren, no needless survey of this 
subject which we have taken ; but every step has led 
us to the right view of the connection between Juda- 
ism and Christianity. We can impartially adjust that 
question. We need not fear the results of a true criti- 
cism. It will only remove superficial errors, it will 
teach us the real purpose of the Hebrew Revelation 
as the record of these essential truths ; and as we 
more and more study it in the spirit which I have 
urged, we shall learn its place in universal history. 
Nor is it only a question of the past, but it concerns 
our view of Christianity itself. Without it the re- 
ligion of Jesus Christ becomes only a chapter of hu- 
man development ; with it, the one continuous law 
of revelation is made clear. The historic roots of 
Christianity are there. The Hebrew past has given 
us what cannot fade away. Its faith in the one living 
personal God is ours ; its decalogue abides in its moral 



Judaism and Cliristianity. 343 

truth ; its ancient institutions, its circumcision and 
passover, have been changed into our own by that 
social growth. which brings the new out of the old. 
We have kept what is essential, is Catholic, and put 
away what is local, national, transient. With our 
purer light, our spiritual freedom, we still look back 
in gratitude to that Hebrew dispensation ; and in 
these latter days, when faith is too often opinion, and 
liberty license, the Law of Israel stands above us to 
teach the fear of God. 

Yet we are fully to understand this historic fact of 
Christianity, and not mistake it for any traditional 
view. If we have learned thus to read this history 
in its living light, it gives us the laws of a true 
criticism. We need not be perplexed as to any 
secondary questions. If the Bible were given for a 
history of an early people, we do not read it for 
its ideas of geology or astronomy, but we read it for 
the divine truths, which make it the preparation of 
Christianity ; this revelation of one God, this holy 
Law, this history of a spiritual training for the day of 
a perfect Christ. And in that spirit we know the dif- 
ference between the Christian mind, which interprets 
it, and every form of tradition, which misreads its 
meaning. 

The Gospel has its historic roots in Judaism, it is 
no Mosaism continued, no mere development of the 
Jewish system. It is no " new thing." The outward 



344 Epochs in Church History. 

form of that system, its ritual, its sacrifice, its minis- 
try, has no binding authority for us. Christ fulfils it 
in abrogating it. Let this principle be well defined. 
It marks the border line between the Gospel and the 
law. The historic growth of religion from Judaism 
is of worth to us, as witnessing the unity of Revela- 
tion, but it has no worth as the basis of a positive 
Christian code. Christ must interpret Moses, not 
Moses Christ. Yet, strange to say, though eighteen 
centuries have rolled away since Jesus spoke on the 
Mount, and a Paul rebuked the circumcisers to their 
face, there is still among us the leaven of the Phari- 
sees. It is seen in our interpretation of the Script- 
ures. We have our divines, who, with the same Rab- 
binical minuteness seek an occult sense under each 
vowel-point, hunt for mysteries in the breastplate of 
Aaron and the utensils of the Levites, and think to 
honor the Holy Word, with all its stately chapters of 
real history, by turning it into a holy book of riddles. 
But there is a worse vice than this. We have our 
ceremonial doctors, who lay down as Christian law 
that all, even to the rites of Judaism, is binding unless 
specifically annulled ; who quote the rule of tithe as 
authoritative, identify the Sabbath day with the Lord's 
day of the Resurrection, think a Christian worship 
modelled on the temple service and altar ; nay, more, 
who, in defiance of the Epistle to the Hebrews, quote 
high priest, priest and Levite, as the type of our three- 



Judaism and Christianity. 345 

fold ministry; who change the ambassadors of Christ 
into a sacerdotal tribe, and the Holy Communion into 
a perpetual sacrifice. This is our Catholicity. This 
is our advanced Ritualism. My brethren, if this be 
Christianity, I marvel why I am here to preach for the 
conversion of the Jews. Why convert them ? Better 
leave them, since we are travelling backward so fast, 
as the unchanged ideal which may always quicken our 
poor aspirations. If this be Christianity, then shut 
the book of the New Testament ; it is a needless 
oracle ; and let us take up again our weary march 
through the desert until we sit beneath the brows of 
Sinai, for the Messiah is not come, and the Redemp- 
tion is a dream. No, brethren ; this is the Judaism 
that fought at the beginning for the mastery with the 
Apostles, and must be conquered. This is our " con- 
cision." Let us hold fast the better inheritance. Ours 
is no Aaronic priesthood, but the ministry of the Son 
of God ; ours no perpetual altar sacrifice, but a com- 
munion with Him of whom that was the vanishing 
shadow ; ours no local presence, but a worship of 
spirit and truth ; ours no tradition of the elders, but 
the authority of Christ, who speaks by His living 
word to the personal faith and conscience of believers. 
But if, my friends, instead of this poor, half Chris- 
tian view, we have indeed learned these living and 
abiding truths which I have set before you, then our 
faith in Revelation will be a clear and convincing fact. 
15* 



346 Epochs in Church History, 

And in that faith we can close the ancient volume, 
with the assurance that it is for us a precious and a 
living truth. It is no longer a religion of the past ; it 
is indeed linked forever with the heart and life of 
Christianity. That Hebrew history speaks to us what 
cannot fade away. Its doctrine of the living God is 
ours ; its decalogue is ours in all its moral meaning, 
as the foundation of our household and our social 
purity ; its ancient institutions tell us of the educa- 
tion which made the world ready for its Saviour. 

In that view I may well, at closing, address this 
society for the conversion of the Jews. We are, as 
members of the Universal Church, seeking to bring 
the ancient race into the fellowship of their own Mes- 
siah. It is because we believe in Christianity as the 
kingdom of God, no local religion, no mere theocracy, 
but one that breaks down all partition walls, that we 
can labor for such an end. I do not, therefore, ask 
whether they are yet to have a restoration to their 
own land, or what is to be the precise character of 
their future. Although I give due respect to the 
learned, who have so interpreted the prophecies, I 
cannot find any proof that the promise is more than 
one, conveyed under Hebrew imagery, of that Chris- 
tian redemption which shall embrace mankind in one 
great family. Nay, to me the whole tenor of the New 
Testament points to a unity where there is neither 
Jew nor Greek. Nor can I read otherwise the analo- 



Judaism and Christianity. 347 

gies of history. I know the seeming strength of the 
argument from the unchanged features, the strange 
identity of the Jewish race even through ages of exile. 
But it is a more indelible law that no nation in the 
record of mankind, after it has done its specific work, 
has ever entered anew on another national career. 
Their moral identity is gone. The whole social char- 
acter, the habits that once grew in the soil of Pales- 
tine, are uprooted. The religious faith itself has lost 
its living power, and has become little more than a 
cold monotheism. Yet here I confess that much is 
theory. He who makes the clouds of human history 
his chariot, will fulfil his plan. But instead of lessen- 
ing our motive, I hold that the view I have given in- 
spires us with a nobler hope. We have our labor for 
the sure future of Christ's own kingdom ; and with it 
we have our debt to Israel, not only in the far past, 
but the debt we owe for a Christian injustice. Who 
does not look back with shame to that long record of 
wrong done to the guiltless children of a Caiaphas and 
a Judas, to the ages of persecution they have suffered 
at the hands of most Catholic kings, and of the Church 
which forgot the last legacy of forgiveness her Lord 
breathed from His cross ? We thank God that day is 
gone. We labor to win their minds with truth, and 
reach their hearts with love. It may be such a task 
shall be a slow one. It is not strange if their ancient 
pride of race, ennobled by the memories of suffering, 



348 EpocJis in Church History. 

shall long keep them apart from us. Yet the time 
shall come, blessed be the Lord God of Israel! when 
they shall see that their religion is not less, but greater 
in the fulfilment of Christianity ; that the little throne 
of David and the local Messiah are but a narrow read- 
ing of their own prophecies ; that to be the heralds 
of a civilization which covers the world, is a prouder 
fact than to be of an isolated and barren race ; and 
then shall the veil at last drop from their hearts ; and 
we and they be no longer aliens, but fellow-citizens 
with the saints in the one household of God. 



A PERSONAL RESURRECTION AND 
MODERN PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 

i. 

It is one of the undesigned proofs of our necessary 
belief in the future life, that even unbelief is not con- 
tent to leave the question unanswered, but must, age 
after age, drop its sounding-line into the same waters. 
We have a marked example of it in the theories of our 
latest positive school on this subject. It rests its chief 
argument against the Christian faith on the ground of 
science ; but there are features in which it is wholly 
unlike the older scepticism. We have been wont to 
look on the denial of a future state as linked with the 
sensual view of a La Mettrie or D'Holbach ; yet our 
modern thinkers appear as teachers of a new ethics, 
and turn away with pity from a religion that needs 
the hope of another world to make it capable of 
virtue. In this claim of the school, I cannot doubt, 
we may find the charm which has drawn so many in 
our day into an acceptance of its theories. We have 
in Mr. Mill the most gifted writer who has guided 
English thought in this direction, especially in the 
essays published after his death as his last legacy to 

349 



350 Epochs in Church History, 

his time. In one of these, that on Immortality, he 
reviews the proofs drawn from natural or revealed 
religion ; he puts aside all knowledge of a life beyond 
the present, yet, with a moral earnestness that lends 
warmth to even his icy logic, he looks forward to the 
age when our faith in the progress of mankind shall 
replace the desire of a personal future. There is a 
stoic grandeur in Mill that takes us back to the last 
days of Roman thought. He has torn up the ideals 
of the past ; his universe is a lonely one, without a 
personal God or a hope beyond this world, yet amidst 
the ruins he clings sternly to the law of duty. It is 
this idea of an immortality in the progress of the race 
which is the pivot of the new ethics. We find it re- 
peated, sometimes in the severer tone of science, some- 
times in the more sparkling rhetoric of the English 
school of Auguste Comte ; and many of our readers 
have met with the latest teaching in " The Soul and 
the Future Life," by Mr, Harrison, who has been held 
worthy of a symposium in the Nineteenth Century. 

None, then, can doubt that such a subject should 
call out the earnest thought of those who have an in- 
terest in the Christian culture of our time. My wish 
is, in this paper, to study the truth of a resurrection 
in its relations with modern science. Far indeed am 
I from any fears that our school of so-called positive 
reasoners can ever shake a faith rooted in the most 
sacred convictions of men ; rather, I hold, that a true 



Personal Resurrection and Physical Science, 351 

philosophy will only end, after this partial eclipse is 
over, in revealing in fuller light a truth on which 
hangs every moral idea of a God, or human life or 
social good. But it is my earnest belief that we need 
a more thorough adjustment of our Christian view 
with the verified facts of science. The chief cause of 
the scepticism I have described lies in the mistake, 
on either hand, which has confounded certain past 
theories of soul and body with the truth of a resurrec- 
tion. I hold that there is not only entire harmony 
between the Christian belief and the most exact in- 
duction, but that our latest science has opened at this 
hour the path of our noblest evidence. 

In entering on this question I shall not state at 
length the argument for a future life, as it will be 
gathered, step by step, in our examination of the 
views urged by the modern sceptic, It will be enough 
to show briefly the ground on which I rest it, and 
the method of our inquiry. We may sum the vari- 
ous proofs given by thinkers, from the Phaidoit of 
Plato to our Christian divines, in three classes : that 
from the nature of our spiritual powers, from the 
moral condition of human life, and from the Christian 
revelation. But it is, I hold, a fatal mistake to think 
that such a truth rests for its ground on any theoreti- 
cal or scientific reasoning. In the deepest sense, it is 
involved in the primary fact of our moral conscious- 
ness. It is not a speculative knowledge that an ex- 



352 Epochs in Church History. 

istence hereafter concerns us, but as a practical one 
And thus, as Kant rightly claimed, the conscious fact 
of our obligation to moral duty compels every man to 
recognize his freedom, his choice between evil and 
good, and with it the law of retribution which de- 
mands a life to come. Our scientific reason does not, 
then, create this conviction ; it only brings out in 
clearer light this fact of our moral experience. We 
learn here the harmony of these varied arguments. 
All are the exposition of one truth as it is studied in 
differing paths. The analysis of our mental powers 
reveals the law of conscious thought, its unity and 
identity amidst the changes of mind or body. The 
facts of human life show the historic evidence to be 
found in the common experience of the race. The 
argument from revelation, while it could not prove 
immortality, if there were no capacity in man to reach 
any truth on such a subject, opens beyond the natural 
belief the whole meaning of the future existence, as it 
is connected with our moral condition, the life of holi- 
ness begun here in the redemption of Christ, and the 
problem of human destiny. But I will not enlarge on 
these ideas, which will be clear as w r e proceed. I do 
not propose to add another to the proofs of a re- 
surrection, but simply to meet science on its own 
ground. 

If, then, we fairly state the positions of the best 
champions of the school who deny the knowledge of a 



Personal Resicrrcction and Physical Science. 353 

future life, it is plainly this : Modern science, it is 
claimed, has shown the organic unity of all the phe- 
nomena of thought, feeling, and voluntary action with 
the physical structure, so that it is impossible to know 
of any save this undivided existence. Since, then, this 
organism is decomposed at death, there can be no 
ground for any scientific knowledge of a resurrection. 
Such is the careful statement of thinkers like Mill. 
There are among the bolder advocates of the material 
school those who push this view to the denial of the pos- 
sibility of a future life. But we must justly understand 
the difference between such men as Moleschott or Haec- 
kel and the wiser exponents of the creed. It is not the 
impossibility of a resurrection, Mill affirms, but the im- 
possibility of evidence. It is not dogmatic disbelief, 
but scepticism. We are not, then, concerned here with 
any direct answer to the materialist, since our whole 
reasoning will involve the refutation of his grosser er- 
ror, but with the far more plausible position of the 
sceptic. Now it must be plain, at a glance, that this 
claim of science seeks to undermine the whole ground 
of evidence which we have before stated. If there be 
in our very structure an impossibility of reaching be- 
yond the fact of organic life and decay, all reasoning 
is^empty theory. Consciousness cannot pass its fixed 
limits of present experience. Moral probabilities are 
no more than an unreal craving of our poor human 
imagination. The miracle of Christianity cannot con- 



354 Epochs in Church History, 

vince the mind which has resolved beforehand that the 
life beyond nature is a dream. And it must, there- 
fore, be as plain that our only way to meet the argu- 
ment of modern scepticism is to examine the scientific 
ground on which it claims to rest. If we can show 
that this has no validity, but rather that science itself 
gives us, in our organic unity, the proof of a law of 
permanence beyond the present, we can then see the 
moral truth of Christianity, and the emptiness of the 
ethics built on an assumption. Such is the method 
of our reasoning. I state it here, that the study I 
undertake may not seem a needless one. To learn 
what science can teach us as to the life hereafter, we 
must first learn what it teaches as to the character of 
our mental and moral and physical life here. It is to 
this first step in our inductive logic I now directly turn. 
We accept, then, as our starting-point, the twofold 
fact of our conscious organic existence. It is admit- 
ted by all that we have on the one hand certain phe- 
nomena of thought, feeling, and volition, which are 
directly known to us in the sphere of our mental ob- 
servation. We recognize thought in the act of think- 
ing, and perception in the act of seeing, and memory 
in the act of recollection. Consciousness gives its own 
evidence of these phenomena. Yet as we study the 
law of this mental action, we know that we cannot 
sever our knowledge of these inward facts from the 
organic conditions of our life. Every one who has 



Personal Resurrection and Physical Science. 355 

become acquainted with the results of modern science 
must grant that the light it has thrown on this 
connection of the mind with the physical organism 
has enlarged our methods of inquiry. It has been 
clearly ascertained that we have a key to many subtle 
marvels of thought, memory, and will in the structure 
of the nervous system, with its branching centres 
leading to the cerebral mass, its responsive afferents 
and efferents. We find a rhythmical law, by which 
each sensation is passed onward through a series of 
comprex changes, so that each perception, each act of 
reasoning, has its correspondence with the functions 
of our nervous activity. Nor is it less wonderful what 
light has been thrown on the abnormal phenomena of 
the mind. Instances of suspended intellectual power, 
insanity, hypnotism, have gone far to show that each 
faculty is affected by the health or disease of a specif- 
ic organ. But we can only glance at the host of facts 
gathered in all treatises from Bernard to Carpenter and 
Spencer ; and we are merely anxious to recognize in the 
fullest sense their bearing on the problem before us. 

What, then, is the conclusion we draw from these 
discoveries? It is, that this connection between the 
mental and physical powers reveals a law of unity, so 
constant in its operation that science has the right to 
affirm that to this extent it understands the relation 
of mind to body. It knows phenomena and force; a 
force manifesting itself as thought, feeling, and volun- 



356 Epochs in Church History. 

tary action under these conditions of its organization. 
And what further knowledge does science reach ? 
Does our study of the physical phenomena tell us any- 
thing of the nature of this organic connection ? None 
whatever. Can it explain in what way the transition 
is made from the ultimate activity of the nerve-centre 
to the act of intellectual consciousness ? No. We 
may take any of the cases in which physiology has 
explored this law. Take an act of perception, as, e.g., 
that of the face of a friend. We find three successive 
steps in the process ; the impression received by the 
sensitive membrane, the transmission of the stimulus 
through the nerve-fibres, and last, the conscious per- 
ception in the brain. Yet, while we can measure the 
time of transmission, and even the interval between 
the first impression and the result, the nexus by which 
the physical movement ends at last in a mental knowl- 
edge is as unknown as before. Or we may analyze 
another class of voluntary phenomena. Suppose, with 
this perception of the face of my friend, there rises in 
me a wish to enter his house. My act will again pass 
through three analogous reflex processes ; the act of 
volition taking place in the brain ; the passage of the 
motor impulse through the spinal cord and nerves to 
their terminations ; and the contraction of the muscular 
fibres. Now in this whole circuit, from centre to cen- 
tre, till the message reaches the brain, is received and 
returned through this human telegraph, the one mys- 



Personal Resurrection and Physical Science, 357 

tery is the unseen operator, yet the one essential fact 
in the case is that which is done by this unseen agency. 
Science cannot give even a hint. The transformation 
from the physical to the mental is the secret. Why, 
then, is this ? Because our instruments are not keen 
enough to detect it ? Not at all. Because no instru- 
ments of physical science can ever do so. Our con- 
clusion cannot be better stated than by Mr. Mill, al- 
though we have yet to see how it can square with his 
own later reasoning : " Science gives no proof that 
organization can produce thought or feeling. The 
utmost it knows is, that all thought is connected with 
bodily organs." Although there is unity of action, 
the two classes of phenomena are so distinct that no 
analysis of the brain structure or functions can give us 
any knowledge of the essence of thought. Refine the 
nerve-fibres to their vanishing-point, suppose what 
molecular change you will in the infinitesimal cell, no 
physiologist can cross the line to what has no extension, 
form, or divisibility. All we can say is, that there is co- 
existence, co-ordination in time, co-working in the re- 
sult. Science ends with phenomena and a force, in the 
last analysis known to be of intelligence, feeling, and 
will. 

We can now apply this induction to the old and 
endless riddle, of which our positive sages think they 
have found the key. I beg the reader not to fear that 
I am about to weary him with a discussion of the 



358 Epochs in Church History. 

rival theories of dualism, idealism, and materialism. 
My task is simply to show how the inductive logic 
disposes of them all with the same impartiality. I 
grant readily, then, the claim of science that the 
notion of two separate substances, spiritual and mate- 
rial, is no longer tenable. The theory seems to me far 
older than Aquinas, to whom Mr. Bain assigns it, and 
to be clearly enunciated by Augustin, in following out 
the Platonic view of ideas as entities. The philosophy 
of Descartes, again, although a grand step in psychol- 
ogy, led to its severance from the study of the 
organic unity of mental and physical action. Science, 
then, dismisses the theory of two separate substances, 
simply because it does not explain at all the twofold 
phenomena of life, but only substitutes an abstraction 
for the fact. But the same reason holds good against 
all other purely metaphysical assumptions. Idealism, 
whether with Berkeley or Fichte, attempts to find 
unity only by denying one of the elements in the 
problem, and thus adds nothing to our real knowledge. 
But it should be equally clear that the theory of 
materialism is merely the other pole of the same fal- 
lacy. If the mental phenomena be, as we have found, 
unresolved in the last analysis by any study of cell or 
fibre, then the notion of "a physical basis," or by 
whatever name we reclothe the old figment of material 
substance, is precisely the same metaphysical assump- 
tion which science rejects. 



Personal Resurrection and Physical Science. 359 

But here I shall ask leave to pass a little into de- 
tail. Our positive sages will accept all we may grant 
as to the other abstractions, but they have a strange 
blindness in regard of the beam in their own eyes. I 
am concerned, therefore, to urge this last point, as it 
bears on the views so often and so loudly uttered by 
the champions of the " physical basis" to-day. We 
cannot find a better exponent than Dr. Maudsley, 
who, in his well-known work, joins so rare a knowl- 
edge of the nervous system with a scorn of all out- 
side his dissecting-room. I need not, after the keen 
dissection of him in a late article of a Review, do 
more than state the central error. Our mental and 
moral activities are the product of our physical struct- 
ure. "The highest functions," in his language, " of 
the nervous system, those to which the hemispherical 
ganglia minister, are those of intelligence, emotion, 
and will." Nothing can be more undisguised than 
this statement. What is a function ? It is an activity 
inherent in the structure of the organ. Circulation is 
a function of the vascular system ; and the blood 
which circulates is a physical thing like the pump 
which sends it along. Thought, then, is in this view 
as material as the nerve-centre. If not so, the word 
function has no meaning. But we have now to ask, 
Where is the proof? Does science give the least trace 
of identity, or kindred, or resemblance between the 
hemispherical ganglia and the conscious fact of percep- 



360 Epochs in Church History, 

tion ? No. We may as well say that memory is a 
secretion of the gray or the white matter ; that sorrow 
is of the same specific gravity or salt taste as the 
liquid of the lachrymal gland ; that joy is of the sub- 
stance of the spinal marrow ; or that there is a rela- 
tionship between the ganglionic knots and the work- 
ing of the logical faculty in untying the knots of an 
argument. To talk of thought or feeling as a function 
of the nerve-centres is simply the denial of the very 
principle of inductive knowledge which such natural- 
ists boasts. It assumes a theory of substance more 
impertinent than that " incorporeal essence which sci- 
ence inherited from theology." Yet I need not push 
the criticism, but leave this philosopher to refute him- 
self. We turn a little further, and we read " that we 
know not what mind is, but we are bound to study 
the laws of its functions." Thought is first a function, 
and then the nervous action is the function of thought. 
Mind is resolvable into ganglionic structure, and then 
mind is an unknown quantity. It is surely the kindest 
counsel one can give to such sages, to say that when 
they venture beyond the dissecting-room they had 
best take a few lessons in the science of ideas which 
they scorn. Nothing, indeed, can be worthier of a 
laugh than the same style of scientific wisdom, so 
constantly appearing in our modern essays on physi- 
ology. Not long ago, I read a lecture on the nerve- 
system by a physician, at the head of his profession, in 



Personal Resurrection and Physical Science, 361 

which he told his hearers that thought was " a secre- 
tion of the brain." One is reminded of the Dutch 
sage, who held the seat of the conscience to be in the 
stomach, and the poetic faculty in the intestines. And 
why not, since we know, according to Emerson, that 
our theology, whether Calvinistic or other, depends 
largely on the biliary duct? Why not create a more 
perfect system of divinity by large doses of calomel, 
or a new Shakespeare by the skilful use of phos- 
phates ? But I should not stay so long on this, were 
it not that clearer intellects, when trained in the sensa- 
tional school, fall into the same error. No better 
answer could be given to this materialistic theory than 
in the words of Mr. Mill, already cited : " Science 
gives no proof that organization can produce thought 
or feeling." Yet Mr. Mill quotes with seeming ap- 
proval the fancy of a speaker in Plato's Phaidon, 
who asks if the soul may not be to the body as the 
music produced by the strings of the lyre. It is 
strange that such a thinker could suppose the unity of 
mind and body solved by a wave of sound, a phenom- 
enon as purely physical as the instrument that sends 
it forth. 

With this criticism I pass to the far truer statement 
of the leaders of the modern school. We have in Mr. 
Spencer, and, longo intervallo, in Mr. Bain, a very 
notable contribution to psychology. They have 

analyzed with much ingenuity the dual activities of 
16 



362 Epochs in Church History. 

our organic life, and find that at no point in the proc- 
ess can the mind and body be separated. We must 
accept this as the " ultimate experience." We have 
in each case of perception, memory, or reasoning, the 
"subjective side" of the same fact which we know on 
its " objective side " as sensation and nerve-force ; and 
we can state the equation either " in terms of these " 
or "terms of those." Yet when we come at length to 
the definition of this " ultimate experience," we have 
two very unlike answers, to each of which I ask special 
attention. One is the conclusion of Bain. He tells 
us that "one substance, with two sets of properties, 
physical and mental, a double-faced unity, would ap- 
pear to comply with all the exigencies of the case." 
But we are forced to say that this seems like a solu- 
tion of the difficulty by a greater one. In what way 
are we helped, by calling it a double-faced unity or 
substance, to know the real nature of the facts? We 
may as well say that mind and body are tied together 
like the Siamese twins. Will he explain the superi- 
ority of his one substance, which joins "two distinct 
entities," two " distinct and wholly unsolvable natures," 
to the old notion of two substances? Are not entities 
substances? Are two of them one substance? Mr. 
Bain has told us that we are to deal with this "as 
with the language of the Athanasian Creed, neither 
confounding the persons nor dividing the substance." 
It is, of course, highly gratifying to a devout mind to 



Personal Resurrection and Physical Science. 363 

see this modern sage going back to the most metaphys- 
ical creeds as his standard ; but even the Athanasian 
Creed refuses to help him. His two entities are sub- 
stances, not persons, and his substance is divided. In- 
deed, like most double-faced things, this unity is no 
unity at all. We turn with more satisfaction to Mr. 
Spencer, In closing his chapter on the " Substance of 
Mind," he reaches a very striking result. It is this, 
that as the twofold phenomena of mind and body must 
be resolved into one force, this force may be either 
spiritual or physical ; yet if he must " choose between 
translating mental phenomena into physical, or physi- 
cal into mental, the latter would seem the more ac- 
ceptable of the two." It a is true step beyond " the 
double-faced unity." Mr. Spencer, it is true, retreats 
anew into his skepsis, and says that " substance of 
mind is the x of our equation." But I beg leave at 
this point to cross-examine the witness. Why does he 
grant at all that, if he must choose, he will accept the 
mental solution of the facts? It is plainly because the 
force, which in the last analysis remains to us, is the 
intellectual one. " If units of external force are re- 
garded as absolutely unknown and unknowable, then 
to translate units of feeling into them is to translate 
the known into the unknown, which is absurd." " It 
is impossible to interpret inner existence in terms of 
outer existence." To translate this idea out of the 
scientific dialect of our author, compared with which 



364 Epochs in Church History. 

the quiddities of the schools are simple, all our knowl- 
edge of the physical facts leads us at last to conscious 
thought and feeling, and therefore to think these a 
product of any other save a thinking and feeling 
power is absurd. This is admirable. But if it be so, 
then there is no longer room for any balancing of 
probabilities. We must choose, and we can only 
choose this result, that there is one substance or one 
force, call it what we will, which is the ultimate solu- 
tion of the phenomena, and that is mind. 

Here, then, we reach the meeting-point, where our 
study passes into the character of the mind itself. All 
along we have used the word science in the sense of 
physical induction, without quarrelling with its narrow- 
ness, until the fallacy should be laid bare by the scien- 
tist himself. We are now to complete the knowledge 
to which natural science only leads. What do we 
mean by this mental or spiritual force? Let me take 
any fact which will be readily allowed by all. I am 
conscious of reading at this moment a sentence in Mr. 
Spencer's " Psychology," and I clearly remember six 
months ago having read the same passage. My act 
of memory binds the two states of thought in one con- 
tinuous whole, so that I recall each thread of the 
twisted argument, each doubt and slow conviction of 
my own mind. Such a process reveals a law of unity 
in myself, as the person in whom these separate states 
cohere. This law of personal identity is surely as 



Personal Resurrection and Physical Science. 365 

much within my scientific knowledge as the tracing 
several sensations to their nerve-centres. Nay, more ; 
it is the ground of all other knowledge. If there be 
no such mental identity, there can be no certainty as 
to the physical induction, since I cannot know myself 
to be the same man who, six months ago, travelled 
with much patience through Mr. Spencer's book. But 
this opens at once the secret of the mental and moral 
force. It reveals a personal, continuous life, which 
abides amidst all natural changes, whether of outward 
or inward existence. If it be said that this mental 
identity is no more a fact than physical identity, and 
is subject to the same conditions of organic structure 
or decay, I reply, that I am assuming no abstract or 
separate spirit, but simply tracing this undeniable 
organic law. This continuous life we know in our 
mental consciousness. It is well expressed in the 
words of Mr. Mill : " Feeling and thought are reality 
— the only reality." We shall ask hereafter how far 
his language is consistent with his denial of the reality 
of a future life ; but it is enough here to say that he 
speaks in no figurative sense, but with scientific strict- 
ness. Without such reality, thought and feeling are 
a whirl of impersonal accidents. Without it life is a 
dream, and we as little concerned with it as with the 
fantastic shapes chasing each other athwart the camera 
obscura to vanish in a moment. It is here, in the as- 
surance of this mental fact, we have our knowledge of 



366 Epochs in Church History. 

the outer world, our unceasing growth from infancy 
to age in the study of nature or of man ; it is here yet 
more we have the capacity of moral growth, and pass 
in the slow experience of the years to that fixed state 
of thought, feeling, will, which we call character. 
Such, I conclude, is the true result of our inquiry. In 
this light I accept gladly the method of modern 
science. If it have taught us to give up our older 
metaphysical abstraction of a twofold substance, of a 
separate immaterial entity which cannot explain the 
organic facts, our loss is a greater gain, for we have 
risen by its induction to a more spiritual as well as 
real truth. If the phenomena of sensation be thus 
traceable to the more subtle nerve-centres; if the life 
of the nerve-centres gain such " subjective validity " 
that the physical ends in the mental act ; if, in a word, 
we find in the structure itself this abiding unity of 
thought, feeling, will, then our inductive science is 
one with the knowledge of a personal, intelligent, and 
moral being. 

We can now pass, with a clear understanding, to 
the question of the future life. It will be seen, I 
trust, that each step of the analysis has been needful 
to meet the problem, and bears at once on the con- 
clusion. What proof is there, from this present or- 
ganization of our physical and mental powers, that 
there will be a resurrection? My answer is, that the 
fact of such a law of personal being, one and abiding 



Personal Resurrection and Physical Science. 367 

amidst all changes, gives us the most reasonable ground 
of belief in its continuance hereafter. Let me at the 
outset guard this position against any just objections 
which may be urged in regard to some of our older 
theories. It is, I fully grant, impossible to reason, as 
has been so often done since Plato, from the inherent 
immortality of the soul as a pure, immaterial essence. 
That argument indeed, was almost wholly given up by 
the early Christian Fathers, although they were of the 
Platonic school, and it was held wiser only to affirm that 
our existence must depend on the will of God. In- 
deed, that view may fairly involve our belief in pre- 
existence, as there is no more reason to infer an eter- 
nity after than before the present, from the nature of 
the soul. Science cannot know this separate, disem- 
bodied entity, which it truly calls an abstraction. I 
doubt not that every mind feels far more than all the 
subtleties of his logic the moral argument of Socrates 
when he says to his judges : " This one truth, O 
judges, ye ought clearly to know, that for a good man 
there is no evil whether he live or die, nor is his wel- 
fare uncared for by the gods." Nor can we find, again, 
any resting-place in such theories as that of Bishop 
Butler drawn from the indivisible character of ulti- 
mate atoms. It was probable, as he held, that the 
human being may be in its essential structure a unit, 
which can survive decay. Science justly rejects eveiy 
such theory as outside its sphere ; and the Christianity 



368 Epochs in Church History. 

which leans on it must part company with real knowl- 
edge. The argument of Butler has indeed the noblest 
force, as we shall yet see, when he reasons from the 
nature of human life as the sphere of moral growth. 
But the scientific knowledge of his time, although his 
guess was enough to meet the objector, had not the 
clear method of our own. It is curious to see, in his 
notion of the eye as only a field-glass, or the leg as a 
walking-staff, his mechanical view of organic life. 

We dismiss, then, all such theories beforehand, and 
meet directly the claim of the modern thinker. It 
cannot be more thoroughly stated than by Mr. Mill, 
and we shall take him as its best exponent. He holds, 
that as our real knowledge goes no further than the co- 
existence of the physical organism with the mental and 
moral powers, we have no ground whatever for the 
conclusion that these powers survive the decay of the 
body. Let us consider just what this claim means. 
It is not that a continuance of our being, under new 
organic conditions, is impossible. Our author, let me 
repeat, is not to be classed among materialists like 
Strauss or Haeckel. No one has more thoroughly 
answered them. It is, as he fairly reasons, wholly un- 
scientific to go beyond the results of our induction. 
There is no necessity that our existence should end 
with the body ; we cannot deny or disprove the possi- 
bility of a future. Such a belief cannot be dismissed 
among exploded superstitions, as in the case of witch- 



Personal Resurrection and Physical Science. 369 

craft. Witchcraft is a belief which has been tested 
within our experience. But the future life is wholly 
beyond experience. Nay, he admits that such a faith 
may be allowed us as a noble aspiration, but it has 
no validity whatever as scientific knowledge. We 
come, then, at once to this clear statement, and test it 
by his own method. Why is it, by the admission of 
Mill, that the question leaves us any possibility at all? 
If it should be proven by inductive science that the 
mental and moral powers are, as the materialist claims, 
only functions of the physical organs, no such possi- 
bility could for a moment be granted. It is not 
merely our ignorance of the future, but the real knowl- 
edge we have of somewhat in the character of this 
organic life here that forces us to admit the idea of a 
possible continuance. Our inductive science has shown 
that the ultimate law of the organism is that of a force 
manifest in thought, feeling, volition ; that while knit 
with the bodily structure it has a personal unity, a 
connected growth from infancy to age in knowledge 
and moral character. 

Now, if this be so, why should not science grant, 
beyond a mere possibility, the most reasonable ground 
of our belief in a future? If the fact of this con- 
nection with the body have been shown to involve no 
necessity of decay, the whole weight of the scientific 
objection is lifted off, and the very character of this 

organic life makes it yet more a positive argument 
i6 w 



370 Epochs in Church History. 

for a resurrection. The law of our existence is not 
affected by the flux and waste of years. " Thought 
and feeling," in the words of Mill, " are reality — the 
only reality ;'" and this reality implies that the power 
which creates them cannot be bounded by the span 
of our little threescore and ten. We may say, in the 
most literal sense, that we pass through the same pro- 
cess of resurrection constantly ; that we are always 
dying in the flesh, always rising anew by virtue 
of this organic identity ; and what we call death is 
but another step in the same unceasing growth. This 
law of our existence, therefore, is not broken, but 
only passes forward to its completeness. It demands 
a future as essential to it ; and if not so, then thought 
and feeling are not reality any more than the waste 
particles of the skin. But it is answered, that science 
can only verify our actual experiences, and this in its 
nature is not, and cannot be, a truth of experience. 
Our whole argument ought to show the fallacy of 
this answer. I admit, of course, that experience can- 
not prove what is beyond experience. But it is the 
task of science to rise from the facts to the laws that 
explain them. The system of Copernicus is an hy- 
pothesis ; and there are eccentric minds which doubt 
it now, as Bacon did ; yet it is no guess, no unscien- 
tific belief, for it " solves phenomena." Belief in a 
future state solves the phenomena, and without it 
they are incapable of a just solution. To say that 



Personal Resurrection and Physical Science. 371 

such a truth is not a demonstration, as in mathe- 
matics, or a verification, as in a visible fact of chem- 
istry or physiology, is not to destroy its reasonable 
proof. It is to beg the whole question. And yet 
this is the very fallacy which runs throughout the 
reasoning of Mr. Mill on this subject, when he tells us 
that it is a sentiment, or a hope without any scientific 
basis. Nay, more ; it is his own admission that such 
a belief may be " philosophically defensible." We 
ask no more than this. It is indeed the most cheer- 
ing thought that, after all, the dreary denial of such a 
mind rested on a narrow definition, and did not 
quench the real power of the truth. But we claim 
the full meaning of his admission. It is no belief to 
be dismissed to the shadowy realm of the subjective 
feeling. If it be what we have proved it, it is not 
only philosophically defensible, but it rests on a 
ground so firm that science must acknowledge its 
agreement with the physical, mental, and moral law 
of our being. 

II. 

We have thus far, in our study of this great ques- 
tion, examined the scientific ground on which modern 
scepticism rests its denial ; and it has led us to the 
conviction that science itself gives us the most rea- 
sonable proof of our continued existence. But here 
we are to pass to a more positive view. I claim that 



372 Epochs in Church History. 

we have in this result a new and most satisfying argu- 
ment for the Christian doctrine of the resurrection. 
My essay will not allow me to offer more than the 
leading idea of so large a subject ; yet enough if I 
make it clear. We have, then, in reaching the law of 
our organic unity amidst the changes of the body, 
met the central error out of which all doubt has 
sprung. It is because the future existence is regarded 
as a state without any analogies with the present, 
that death is held an annihilation of life. Here, then, 
we enter by the path of science itself on the ground 
of revelation. It has been, from the first, the teach- 
ing of the Christian Church, as embodied in its oldest 
creed, that there is to be a personal resurrection of 
soul and body. But this truth, although most rea- 
sonable and most spiritual in its Biblical meaning, has 
been too often identified with the notion of a material 
body, compacted of the same fleshy atoms. There is 
a vast distance from St. Paul to the gross view of 
Tertullian, and of many of the traditional expositors 
of later days. Even a sober divine like Bishop Pear- 
son could only answer the scientific doubter by claim- 
ing that Omnipotence can gather the scattered parts, 
so that " each bone shall know its old neighbor- 
bone." It was not strange that such an arbitrary 
marvel should seem absurd to the chemist who knew 
that " the noble dust of an Alexander " might have 
played its part in the bodies of a thousand meaner 



Personal Resurrection and Physical Science. 373 

men ; nor can we doubt that hence there has grown 
by degrees into the popular theology the vague no- 
tion of a disembodied state, a world of spirits without 
any real relation to this. 

But if we rightly understand this sacred truth of 
the resurrection, it teaches us that very view of the 
future which has its confirmation in science. This 
undivided personality of the man, in its organic unity 
of soul and body, shall be the same in the future 
state. We can thus appreciate the masterly argu- 
ment of the Apostle in his epistle to the Corinthians. 
Every seed shall have "his own body ; " yet the body 
" that shall be " is not the natural body, for " flesh 
and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God." 
Each shall be the same in all that constitutes the or- 
ganic personality, and this unchanging life will put on 
its nobler form under the conditions of its nobler 
state. In such a view there is nothing gross, but the 
very reality to satisfy the mind or heart. If we so 
look on the human form, as a Christian science can 
do ; if we so recognize this mental and spiritual law 
of its organic unity, it becomes in its truest sense the 
incarnation of the inward man. It is no mechanism ; 
it is our personal self. Who, indeed, has studied the 
mystery, shrouded in our daily life, by which our af- 
fections are linked with the faces and forms we love ; 
who that has watched the transfiguration passing over 
the man, until the beauty of the soul has refined the 



374 Epochs in Church History. 

plainest features, and vice, again, has furrowed over 
the fairest the lines of lust or hate, who, I ask, has not 
felt the meaning of that scripture : " Know ye not 
that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit." 
" If any man destroy the temple of God, him will God 
destroy " ? Or who that knows the power of unselfish 
love, of joy, of hope, of holy activity, lodged in these 
bodies, even in a world of decay, cannot conceive 
somewhat of their capacities in a sphere of riper 
growth ? Yet I will not follow out such thoughts, 
although far from unreasonable, beyond my line of 
argument. Much may be within the range of philo- 
sophic opinion which is not of necessity truth. It is 
enough that our belief has its harmony with the best 
results of science. A Christian faith is no baseless 
sentiment. It completes the fact, graven on the 
moral consciousness of man, which all our scepticism 
cannot destroy ; it gives us no theories of an un- 
known world, but joins present and future as one liv- 
ing reality; it answers, with a divine revelation, to 
the necessary craving of the human soul for a truth 
which shall make this life the sphere of our growth, 
our hope, our labor for the life eternal. 

Here, then, we can enter on the next division of 
our subject — the moral argument for the doctrine of 
the resurrection. The religion of Christ declares, that 
in this truth of a future life we have the only solution 



Personal Resurrection and Physical Science. 375 

of our present existence, and the noblest motive of 
holiness. Modern scepticism declares such a faith an 
illusion, and the morality it offers a selfish one. I 
trust it will now be plain that it was necessary, first 
of all, to take up the scientific ground. It is with 
this the new ethics must stand or fall. In this light 
we can now examine the strange mistakes which all 
such thinkers have made in regard to the character of 
Christianity, and the doctrine they would offer us as 
the latest discovery of moral science. 

Let us, then, briefly state the argument, as it has 
been urged by Christian writers. I have said, at the 
outset, that the conscience of mankind reaches the 
conviction of a future life in the growth of its real ex- 
perience, and all our philosophy can do is to present 
this conviction of lettered or unlettered minds in 
more explicit reasoning: Our scientific argument was 
nothing more than the analysis of the fact of our per- 
sonal identity given in every consciousness. Our 
moral argument is only its application to human life. 
It rests, in a word, on the knowledge of the imperfec- 
tion of our present state, and our capacities of a good 
which the present cannot supply. We may state it, 
on its spiritual side, as the experience of our struggle 
with sin, our sense of retribution, and our need of 
that perfect holiness in which is the happiness of the 
soul. Pascal has expressed it in one sentence : " The 
present is never our end ; the future only is our ob- 



376 Epochs in Church History. 

ject. Thus we never live, but hope to live ; and 
always aiming to be happy, we can never be, unless 
we seek another beatitude than we can enjoy here." 
We may state it, on its intellectual side, in that 
strong saying of Goethe's : " The eternal existence of 
my soul is proved from my need of activity. If I 
work incessantly till death, nature is pledged to give 
me another form of being, when the present can no 
longer sustain my action." We may state it on its 
social side, as a conviction that there must be a state 
where the riddles of this world, of immature death, of 
sickness, misery, inequality, and, most of all, the par- 
tial victory of goodness, shall be solved by a right- 
eous God. None can deny the fact of such moral 
ideas ; and so necessary, so universal are they, that 
they must point to a reality. 

Now it is to this whole array of proof that our 
modern school replies in one sweeping denial. It 
does not deny the sentiments, but it claims that, so 
far from being proof of any reality, they are the 
growth of natural superstition, and the source of self- 
ish action. The craving for another sphere of men- 
tal or moral existence gives us no more positive evi- 
dence than the desire of the old man for the happi- 
ness of his childhood can give him the hope of its 
renewal. The Christian paradise is a myth, like that 
of the fountain of youth, which led Ponce de Leon 
into the savannahs of Florida to find only death. All 



Personal Resurrection and Physical Science. 377 

the facts of disease, of suffering, of unpunished 
wrong, are no evidence of a future ; but rather, in 
the view of Mr. Mill, they show the non-existence of 
a God, or the existence of a weak or an evil power. 
Here, then, we have the whole question before us, on 
which the moral argument depends ; and here we can 
meet it. It is granted that, if there be no ground for 
a reasonable belief that our personal existence sur- 
vives this present organic condition, all such moral 
convictions are an illusion. We must accept the 
strange riddle of our destiny, and make the best of it. 
But if, as we have seen, science confirms such a belief, 
then to doubt the reality of such convictions is the 
insanity of the man who doubts his own identity. It 
is to suppose a nature without a purpose, a growth 
without a ripening, a life compelled to crave knowl- 
edge and goodness, yet in which each step is a 
curse. 

We might, then, close the question of morality 
here ; but there are so many points of interest in this 
new ethics, that we shall take up in brief detail the 
more important of them. It is the claim of our mod- 
ern thinkers that the belief in a future life is not uni- 
versal. We are told that our late researches into 
primitive history have exhumed many savage tribes 
without a trace of such a faith, and that where it 
exists it has sprung from the notion of ghosts, sug- 
gested by the phenomena of dreams. But it is 



378 Epochs in Church History. 

strange that such reasoners cannot see that the very- 
fact admitted by writers like Tylor and Lubbock is 
itself the disproof of their assertion. The belief in 
ghosts is universal ; and that belief, whatever its 
crudeness is the confession of the deep-rooted con- 
viction that in some way the dead yet exist. Could 
it be shown that a few tribes have never had even this 
faith, it will no more disprove the general fact than 
the blind fishes of the Mammoth Cave disprove the 
eyesight of the vast tribes in the rivers or the seas. 
We do not expect of the savage a defined or reason- 
able idea of the future life ; we expect simply this 
childlike conception of it ; and to ignore its meaning 
is to show ourselves incapable of understanding the 
character of any early religion. There is to my mind 
a nobler reason in the African who worships the 
shade of his ancestors than in him who, because he 
has unlearned his faith in ghosts, has concluded that 
there is no reality beyond the senses. 

Nor is this less clear in those historic examples 
which Mill and others have cited of the Hebrew and 
the Buddhist religions. The absence of any belief in 
immortality, so often asserted since the treatise of the 
learned but inaccurate Warburton, is not allowed by 
the best Hebrew scholars. It was not strange that, in 
the youth of the Jewish people, the living faith in a 
divine Ruler and a present law of retribution should 
be the more prominent feature of their religion. A 



Personal Resurrection and Physical Science. 379 

fully developed conviction of this future existence is 
always the fruit of experience with a nation, as it is 
with the growth of the child into the more thought- 
ful man. The Sheol, or underworld, to the Israelite 
of the heroic age, as to the Greek of the Homeric 
poems, was a region peopled with shadowy forms ; 
yet there is quite enough in the Pentateuch and early 
history, as in the story of Enoch's translation, the 
raising of the spirit of Samuel, the ascension of 
Elijah, to prove that from the first such a belief ex- 
isted. " History," says Mill, " does not bear out the 
opinion that mankind cannot do perfectly well with- 
out a heaven." History does bear it out with em- 
phasis. It was this early faith which passed with the 
long, sad experience of the nation into a conviction 
so rooted that nothing could destroy it. Sadduceeism 
was at most a sceptical sect ; but the lasting power of 
the Pharisee over the people lay in this, that he kept 
alive such positive truths. But Mr. Mill is yet more 
unfortunate in citing Buddhism. Apart from the 
quite uncertain claim that the Nirvana means annihi- 
lation, it is clear that the religion could not stay with 
the silence of its founder, but has created a mythol- 
ogy as fanciful as that of the Brahman, and even 
incorporated the doctrine of transmigration. We may 
deplore the superstition, but it proves the fact. 

We thus pass to the more ethical objections. It is 
urged alike against the heathen or Christian belief that 



380 Epochs in Church History. 

it has been the parent of immoral and cruel fancies. 
We might answer, in the spirit of Bacon against 
atheism : " I had rather believe all the fables of the 
Hindu than that this bodily frame is without a soul." 
Yet I prefer to say, that while we admit all the gross- 
ness mingled with the ideas of the future, it is surely 
the wisdom of the philosopher to allow both the in- 
tense power of the faith which created the mythology, 
and the witness it gives to the moral judgment of 
mankind. There is a kind of " wild justice " in each 
system. Each is a popular Theodicsea. When I read 
the funeral ritual of the Egyptians in Bunsen's vol- 
umes, or the dark fancies pervading Hindu poetry of 
souls doomed to wander through ages of purifying, 
they speak of the eternal truth graven on the con- 
science, of the self-avenging power of sin. Or when 
I study the theology of the Latin age in the poem of 
Dante, all the stern or grotesque imagery cannot hide 
the ideal justice which metes out pain to wicked king 
or pontiff, and the immortal love that rewards the 
good. If I mourn over the strange religion which 
could believe in a " limbus infantum" I find that as 
often the moral truth corrects the dogma ; Virgil is 
the messenger of Beatrice, and Cato, with other 
crowned worthies, can enjoy a place of honor in even 
the Roman Catholic underworld. A purer Christian 
knowledge will by degrees rid us of the gross notions 
that disfigure the truth, but it can never uproot this 



Personal Resurrection and Physical Science. 381 

conviction, unless it can make evil good and good 
evil. 

But it is urged again that the Christian doctrine of 
the future has led to a vast amount of selfish religion. 
It is said that one of the chief hindrances of social 
progress has been found in the Church, which taught 
men to submit to every wrong of slavery or caste, and 
flattered them in their trial with the unreal hope of a 
heaven to come. This is a favorite charge with our 
Socialists of the unchristian type. None need deny 
that there is a partial truth in it when it is urged 
against the code of monastic morals ; nor do I doubt 
that it is a weighty charge against the like spirit in 
many later forms, the unmanly quietism that forgeta 
the duty of the Christian as man and citizen. But 
when it is urged against the belief in a future life, as 
it is taught by the Gospel or witnessed in its real re- 
sults, I cannot withhold a smile at its absurdity. 
Whatever else may be said of such a faith, it is folly 
to say that the heroism, the active benevolence, the 
humanity have been the marked virtues of the unbe- 
liever. Let the sceptic beware of such dangerous 
comparisons. But a far more serious charge is brought 
against the Christian doctrine when it is called a self- 
ish one. I can only feel a sad regret that a critic 
usually so fair as Mr. Mill should have so misread the 
New Testament, as to speak of the " Christ of the 
Gospels as holding out the direct promise of reward 



382 Epochs in Church History. 

as a primary inducement to beneficence." Had it 
been simply his aim to unmask the selfish theories 
which have perverted the Gospel, I should grant them 
worthy of his rebuke. One might ask, indeed, if by 
the philosophy of his own school self-love be the orig- 
inal motive of action, why " the desire of everlasting 
happiness," as Paley held, should be called immoral? 
But I do not allow that the religion of the Gospel 
accepts that ethics, whether in the fashion of Bentham 
or of a base theology. The Christianity which has 
preached the dread of hell instead of the fear of sin, 
or the payment of a heaven to come instead of the 
life of holiness, has been the root of the worst false- 
hoods in theory and in practice. It has led to all ar- 
bitrary devices of salvation, to self-deluded hope, and 
to spiritual sloth. But it is strange ignorance that 
such moralists should not know that the unselfish 
doctrine they profess to teach is that of the Gospel 
they reject. It tells that the happiness we seek is 
begun here in the holiness of the heart, and that the 
punishment of sin is in its own self-retribution. We 
learn it not only from Him who taught us to lose our 
life, if we would find it, in unselfish duty, but in all 
from a Paul to a Xavier, a Fenelon, a Leighton, who 
have breathed his spirit. This is the essence of 
Christian morality. It does not take away all motive 
of action here by denying that there is any reality 
beyond the present, but it offers us the highest and 



Personal Resurrection and Physical Science. 383 

purest of motives in the undying nature of holiness 
itself. 

And here, then, we reach the point where we can 
unmask the strange falsehood of this morality. What 
is it that offers instead of the faith it rejects ? What 
is this new ethics of our time ? I do not wish to un- 
dervalue its aim. It is a far nobler code than that of 
the sensual school, from the Greek Epicurus to Hel- 
vetius. I honor the virtue of Mill, as I do the Stoic 
grandeur of Marcus Antoninus, when linked with the 
same religion of despair ; but I none the less maintain 
that the position of such thinkers is as untrue to the 
moral facts of life as to those of science. What is 
this morality which shall replace a selfish Christian- 
ity ? We will look at the clear statement of Mr. Mill. 
He believed that as mankind grows in culture, the 
selfish desire of personal immortality will pass into a 
love of the race, and this he thinks " a better religion 
than any ordinarily called by that title." We have 
here the favorite doctrine of the school. I will not 
pause to ask how this pure " altruism " is to come out 
of the original self-love, which by the principles of the 
school is the motive of human action. The question 
is a far deeper one than such moralists assume. It is 
not whether virtue demands an unselfish love ; it is 
whether there can be any meaning in the word at all, 
unless we have the assurance of a reality beyond the 
present. Pleasure and pain are the only realities. 



384 Epochs in Church History. 

Truth, honesty, purity, are abstractions. If we be- 
lieve that there is no moral governor of the world, 
that we are only insects of a day in this busy ant-hill, 
that all our efforts after wisdom or goodness are to 
end with ourselves, so far as any assurance of their 
reality is given us, what then is virtue ? What is 
vice ? what the possibility of such relief in duty as to 
uphold an earnest man in self-sacrifice for a dream ? 
It may be that a sincere mind like Mill will scorn the 
base maxim, " Eat and drink, for to-morrow we die ; " 
but it is no less sure that his virtue will be only the 
inconsistency of a moral faith that survives the scep- 
ticism. It may be that culture will teach us to hus- 
band our pleasures temperately, as Epicurus did ; but 
it is sure that the virtue of the best will be a selfish 
ease, and the bulk of men will be of th.e" gr ex epicuri' % 
And what, again, is this life for the race, which we 
are told is nobler far than the wish of a personal 
immortality ? What is our hope of the permanent 
triumph of good for a breed of insects, that sprang 
we know not whence, and will vanish we know not 
when or whither ? What shall keep down the fierce 
or sad pessimism which even now is the outcome of 
this latest morality, and has its utterance in that de- 
spairing jest of Renan, Nous sommes exploited " ? 

Yet I need go no further than to the essays of Mr. 
Mill for his refutation. It must have been in a mood 
of strange human weakness he wrote this : " The in- 



Personal Resurrection and Physical Science. 385 

diligence of hope with regard to the government of 
the universe and the destiny of man after death, 
while we have no ground for more than a hope, is le- 
gitimate and philosophically defensible/' " It allays 
that sense of the irony of nature, so painful when we 
see the sacrifices of a wise and noble life culminating 
only to disappoint. The loftier aspirations are no lon- 
ger checked by a sense of the insignificance of human 
life, by the disastrous feeling of not worth while." 
Scepticism is indeed its own antidote. Could a Chris- 
tian divine have given a nobler statement? But what 
becomes of the theory ? If the desire of personal 
immortality be baseless, and the love of the race more 
unselfish without it, it is the duty of the sage to crush 
it forever. This is the logic of the ethics ; and the 
only marvel is, that a moral sense so true had not 
swept from his brain the cobweb of unbelief. 

But I must briefly pass, in closing, to the later 
ideas of the school. It is in Mr. Harrison that this 
doctrine of immortality in the race has found its full- 
est expression. I shall not dwell at length on his two 
essays on " The Soul and the Future Life,'* because 
he has only repeated with less clearness and more 
rhetoric the scientific views of Mill ; but he stands 
alone as the author of a new and brilliant discovery in 
ethics. It is his position, that "the notion of a spirit- 
ual entity, other than this organism, needs no refuta- 
tion now ;" and thus, " at death the existence of the 
17 



386 Epochs in Church History. 

complex entity, to which we attribute consciousness, 
undoubtedly — i.e., for aught we know to the con- 
trary — comes to an end." But we are now to admire 
the upbuilding of a religion on this physical basis. We 
are told that this is not materialism, but that he looks 
with horror on the irreligious science that makes " de- 
votion a molecular change in this or that convolution 
of gray pulp." He is prepared to give us a hope of 
immortality, that shall be at once free from supersti- 
tion, yet satisfy every spiritual longing. And what is 
this secret? It is the perpetuity of life in the organ- 
isms of other human beings. Let no reader turn 
from this startling paradox ; but listen to our new St. 
Paul. Although this personal compound is dissolved, 
yet the intellectual and. moral activities do not end ; 
nay, they are not dispersed like the elements of the 
body, but " they continue largely in their organic 
unities," and " pass into the mental and moral being 
of a similar organism." Thus the organic activity of 
Newton is more real after death. Is not this, he asks 
in rapture, a nobler idea than that of u a ceaseless 
psalmody in an immaterial heaven "? " The Christian 
looks to a permanence of consciousness, which can 
enjoy," this to " a permanence of activities, that give 
others happiness." Make it " the basis of philosophy 
and religion," and this doctrine of our continued life 
in the race will be the " greatest of motives." 

Such is the doctrine of the essay, and we can only 



Personal Resurrection and Physical Science, 387 

ask, after much pondering, what does it mean ? We 
can understand Mr. Mill's plain English of the influ- 
ence of a good man after death. But what, we say 
with Socrates, what, O wonderful man ! is this intel- 
lectual and moral activity, which, after the complex 
organism of nerves and cells and thought and feeling 
is decomposed, continues in its organic unity in a 
similar organism ? Is it personal ? if so, how can it 
pass into a second personality? Is it impersonal? 
how, then, can it continue in its organic unity? Are 
there several minds in one conscious entity? The 
Hindu idea of transmigration has its perplexities ; but 
it is science compared with this. If this subject which 
is object, this personal impersonality, and impersonal 
personality, this me which is not me, and not me 
which is me, if this be the basis of the new alliance 
between science and religion, we may indeed grant 
that " ignorance is the mother of devotion." It is 
neither science nor religion. We could have wished 
that another Socrates had been at the symposium 
held over this essay ; but certainly the dissecting- 
knife of Professor Huxley, no Socrates indeed, yet a 
keen surgeon, went to the medulla of it. " It is a 
half-breed between science and theology; and, like 
most half-breeds, with the faults of both parents and 
the virtues of neither.'' Nothing can better describe 
it than the author's phrase touching the Christian 
doctrine : it is " a matter for dithyrambic hypotheses 



388 Epochs in Church History. 

and evasive tropes." But we will stay no longer on 
this criticism. We can leave it with the comforting 
thought that at least our new scientists will teach us 
not to mistake for a lofty ethics a trick of speech, but 
to accept on the one hand the truth of a personal 
resurrection, or the plain fact that there is no life 
beyond the decaying body. This is the outcome of 
the philosophy, which boasts itself to be the flow- 
erage of all the knowledge of the centuries. It can 
give us at last only the dream of an immortality in 
the race, yet the race itself is but the series of mortal 
births in a world, which knows nothing of the future 
save the one certainty of death ; nothing of our des- 
tiny save a struggle after a wisdom that ends in anni- 
hilation. Modern scepticism is its own best refuta- 
tion. Its science is a false reading of the laws of 
organic life, and its ethics are the ethics of despair. 

Yet as I close this essay, it will be, I trust, to leave 
the reader not only with the feeling that our Christian 
faith has nothing to fear, but that we have much to 
hope from the study of this great subject. If I have 
proved any thing, it is that science itself will, by its 
own just method, guide the mind of our time out of 
this dreary nihilism. The better knowledge of physi- 
cal laws will lead to that of the intellectual and moral 
life. The Christian doctrine in its turn will be purged 
of the misty notions, and yet more of the selfish mo- 



Personal Resurrection and Physical Science. 389 

rality which have obscured it. I cannot doubt that 
this is as needful for the cure of scepticism as any direct 
attacks. And thus, last of all, I am persuaded, we 
shall learn the deeper lesson which this controversy 
should give us. It has always seemed to me an ad- 
mirable logic in Cousin, when he proves that atheism 
is impossible in the nature of human thought, and 
that the sophistry of Lucretius, if we examine it, ad- 
mits the Infinite Cause it verbally denies. As we have 
thus read the pages of Mr. Mill, vast as the chasm 
seems between him and Christianity, we have found 
the best answers to his theory in the admission of his 
moral feeling, which clung to the pure precepts of a 
Gospel he denied, and even held the hope of a future 
a source of comfort. In that light we may believe 
that many minds are nearer to the truth than they 
suppose ; that the scepticism of our time is but a pass- 
ing phase of thought ; and that the faith which the- 
ories never gave, and can never take away, will abide 
as undying as the moral nature of man. 



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